fMRI of Hormonal Variation in Cognitive-Affective Processing

在国家科学基金会的支持下，坎利博士和他的同事们将进行一项为期三年的调查，研究荷尔蒙状态的变化如何影响认知和情绪相关心理过程中的大脑激活模式。具体地说，功能磁共振成像(FMRI)将被用来记录两组女性在认知和情感刺激下的大脑激活模式。一组将由女性组成，她们将在自然发生的月经周期的不同时间接受扫描。另一组将由绝经后妇女组成，她们将在服用雌激素/黄体酮或安慰剂(糖丸)的三周期间进行扫描。这些研究的结果将阐明我们对情绪的荷尔蒙调节以及这些状态背后的神经结构的理解。美国国家科学院呼吁对性别差异进行更多生物医学研究，人们对性别决定大脑功能的一些基本方面知之甚少。这项工作不仅将填补基础神经科学方面的知识空白，还可能指导未来的临床研究，以了解抑郁症等情绪障碍的发病率存在显著的性别差异，女性患抑郁症的人数是男性的四倍。此外，这项拟议的工作可能对衡量激素替代疗法对大脑功能的影响的绝经后女性有益。很大一部分人可能会考虑这样的决定，因为据估计，平均每个女性成年后至少有一半的时间是在循环雌激素水平下降的情况下度过的。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Canli and colleagues will conduct a three-year investigation into how changes in hormonal state affect brain activation patterns during cognitive and emotion-related psychological processes. Specifically, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used to record brain activation patterns in response to cognitive and emotional stimuli in two groups of women. One group will consist of women who will be scanned at different times in the naturally occurring menstrual cycle. The other group will consist of post-menopausal women who will be scanned during a three-week period of estrogen/progesterone or placebo (sugar pill) administration. The results of these studies will illuminate our understanding of hormonal regulation of mood and the neural structures that underlie these states. Very little is known about some fundamental aspects of brain function as a function of gender, as suggested by a call by the National Academy of Sciences to devote more biomedical research to sex differences. This work will not only fill a knowledge gap in basic neuroscience, but may also guide future clinical studies to understand the striking sex differences in the incidence of mood disorders such as depression, which strikes as many as four times as many women than men. Furthermore, the proposed work may be of benefit for postmenopausal women weighing the consequences of hormone replacement therapy on brain function. Such decisions will likely be contemplated by large segments of the population, as it is estimated that the average woman will spend at least half her adult life with decreased levels of circulating estrogen.