Selective attention towards infants in nulliparous women across the menstrual cycle.

Autor: Holtfrerich SKC; Universität Hamburg, Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences, Department of Biology, Institute of Zoology, Neuroendocrinology and Human Biology Unit, Martin-Luther-King Platz 3, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany., Diekhof EK; Universität Hamburg, Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences, Department of Biology, Institute of Zoology, Neuroendocrinology and Human Biology Unit, Martin-Luther-King Platz 3, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany. Electronic address: esther.diekhof@uni-hamburg.de.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Hormones and behavior [Horm Behav] 2024 Apr; Vol. 160, pp. 105492. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Feb 01.
DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2024.105492
Abstrakt: Research in women showed that testosterone is associated with decreased selective attention towards infant stimuli, which can be compensated for by oxytocin administration. In theory, caregiving behavior is thought to be mediated by oxytocin. Oxytocin binds to dopaminergic neurons and thus supposedly motivates aspects of caregiving through its influence on dopaminergic transmission. Most previous studies on caregiving behaviors were thereby performed in women under hormonal contraception to avoid hormonal fluctuations. However, recent studies repeatedly demonstrated decisive influences of the hormonal changes across the female menstrual cycle on dopamine-mediated behaviors, suggesting that estradiol acts as dopamine agonist in the follicular phase and progesterone as dopamine antagonist in the luteal phase. In the present study, we investigated selective attention towards infants as one central aspect of caregiving behavior over the natural menstrual cycle and in relation to interindividual differences of estradiol and progesterone. As expected, we found that women with higher estradiol in the follicular phase also showed higher selective attention towards infant faces among adult distractors, whereas the correlation disappeared in the luteal phase. In contrast, progesterone did not correlate with selective attention towards infants. The present findings collectively support the assumption that estradiol may act as dopamine agonist in the follicular phase, thereby supposedly promoting an important aspect of caretaking behavior.
(Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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