Working Memory for Emotional Facial Expressions: Role of Estrogen in Humans and Non-Human Primates

Gasbarri, Antonella; Pompili, Assunta; D'Onofrio, Armida; Abreu, Carina Tostes; Tavares, Maria Clotilde Henriques

doi:10.1515/revneuro.2008.19.2-3.129

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 67 publications

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“…Moreover, women, but not men, showed a significantly positive relationship between estrogen and voice-related modulations of the P200. This finding is largely in line with previous work that has implicated estrogen in social and emotional processing (Gasbarri, Pompili, D'Onofrio, Abreu & Tavares 2008;Schirmer, Escoffier, Li, Li, Strafford-Wilson and Li 2008a;Zeidan et al, 2011). Evidence that links estrogen to the neuropeptide oxytocin (OT), a key player in the processing of socially relevant information such as faces or voices (Averbeck, 2010;Ebstein, Israel, Chew, Zhong & Knafo 2010), offers a potential mechanism underlying these effects.…”

Section: Individual Differencessupporting

confidence: 88%

Vocal emotions influence verbal memory: Neural correlates and interindividual differences

Schirmer

Chen

Ching

et al. 2012

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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Past research has identified an event-related potential (ERP) marker for vocal emotional encoding and has highlighted vocal-processing differences between male and female listeners. We further investigated this ERP vocal-encoding effect in order to determine whether it predicts voice-related changes in listeners' memory for verbal interaction content. Additionally, we explored whether sex differences in vocal processing would affect such changes. To these ends, we presented participants with a series of neutral words spoken with a neutral or a sad voice. The participants subsequently encountered these words, together with new words, in a visual word recognition test. In addition to making old/new decisions, the participants rated the emotional valence of each test word. During the encoding of spoken words, sad voices elicited a greater P200 in the ERP than did neutral voices. While the P200 effect was unrelated to a subsequent recognition advantage for test words previously heard with a neutral as compared to a sad voice, the P200 did significantly predict differences between these words in a concurrent late positive ERP component. Additionally, the P200 effect predicted voice-related changes in word valence. As compared to words studied with a neutral voice, words studied with a sad voice were rated more negatively, and this rating difference was larger, the larger the P200 encoding effect was. While some of these results were comparable in male and female participants, the latter group showed a stronger P200 encoding effect and qualitatively different ERP responses during word retrieval. Estrogen measurements suggested the possibility that these sex differences have a genetic basis.

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Section: Individual Differencessupporting

confidence: 88%

Vocal emotions influence verbal memory: Neural correlates and interindividual differences

Schirmer

Chen

Ching

et al. 2012

Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci

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“…Estrogens, in particular estradiol, enhance working memory in women [79], [80] and testosterone supplementation may enhance working memory in older men [81], [82]. We did not measure DHEA metabolites, which may mediate some of its effects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Relationship between Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), Working Memory and Distraction – A Behavioral and Electrophysiological Approach

et al. 2014

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Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and dehydroepiandrosterone-sulphate (DHEAS) have been reported to have memory enhancement effects in humans. A neuro-stimulatory action and an anti-cortisol mechanism of action may contribute to that relation. In order to study DHEA, DHEAS and cortisol relations to working memory and distraction, we recorded the electroencephalogram of 23 young women performing a discrimination (no working memory load) or 1-back (working memory load) task in an audio-visual oddball paradigm. We measured salivary DHEA, DHEAS and cortisol both before each task and at 30 and 60 min. Under working memory load, a higher baseline cortisol/DHEA ratio was related to higher distraction as indexed by an enhanced novelty P3. This suggests that cortisol may lead to increased distraction whereas DHEA may hinder distraction by leading to less processing of the distractor. An increased DHEA production with consecutive cognitive tasks was found and higher DHEA responses attributed to working memory load were related to enhanced working memory processing as indexed by an enhanced visual P300. Overall, the results suggest that in women DHEA may oppose cortisol effects reducing distraction and that a higher DHEA response may enhance working memory at the electrophysiological level.

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“…Functional sex-related differences have been shown in brain correlates of emotional (Gasbarri et al, 2008b,c) and facial processing (Killgore and Yurgelun-Todd, 2001), working memory (Speck et al, 2000), auditory (Salmelin et al, 1999; Hulten et al, 2010) and language processing (Shaywitz et al, 1995; Pugh et al, 1996). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex-Related Memory Recall and Talkativeness for Emotional Stimuli

Arnone¹,

Pompili²,

Tavares³

et al. 2011

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Recent studies have evidenced an increasing interest in sex-related brain mechanisms and cerebral lateralization subserving emotional memory, language processing, and conversational behavior. We used event-related-potentials (ERP) to examine the influence of sex and hemisphere on brain responses to emotional stimuli. Given that the P300 component of ERP is considered a cognitive neuroelectric phenomenon, we compared left and right hemisphere P300 responses to emotional stimuli in men and women. As indexed by both amplitude and latency measures, emotional stimuli elicited more robust P300 effects in the left hemisphere in women than in men, while a stronger P300 component was elicited in the right hemisphere in men compared to women. Our findings show that the variables of sex and hemisphere interacted significantly to influence the strength of the P300 component to the emotional stimuli. Emotional stimuli were also best recalled when given a long-term, incidental memory test, a fact potentially related to the differential P300 waves at encoding. Moreover, taking into account the sex-related differences in language processing and conversational behavior, in the present study we evaluated possible talkativeness differences between the two genders in the recollection of emotional stimuli. Our data showed that women used a higher number of words, compared to men, to describe both arousal and neutral stories. Moreover, the present results support the view that sex differences in lateralization may not be a general feature of language processing but may be related to the specific condition, such as the emotional content of stimuli.

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Working Memory for Emotional Facial Expressions: Role of Estrogen in Humans and Non-Human Primates

Cited by 12 publications

References 67 publications

Vocal emotions influence verbal memory: Neural correlates and interindividual differences

Vocal emotions influence verbal memory: Neural correlates and interindividual differences

The Relationship between Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), Working Memory and Distraction – A Behavioral and Electrophysiological Approach

Sex-Related Memory Recall and Talkativeness for Emotional Stimuli

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