Starting the pill during adolescence: Age of onset and duration of use influence morphology of the hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

From adolescence, women become more likely to experience fear dysregulation. Oral contraceptives (OCs) can modulate the brain regions involved in fear processes. OCs are generally used for years and often initiated during adolescence, a sensitive period where certain brain regions involved in the fear circuitry are still undergoing important reorganization.

Morphologic alterations of the fear circuitry: the role of sex hormones and oral contraceptives.

Background: Endogenous sex hormones and oral contraceptives (OCs) have been shown to influence key regions implicated in fear processing. While OC use has been found to impact brain morphology, methodological challenges remain to be addressed, such as avoiding selection bias between OC users and non-users, as well as examining potential lasting effects of OC intake.

Objective: We investigated the current and lasting effects of OC use, as well as the interplay between the current hormonal milieu and history of hormonal contraception use on structural correlates of the fear circuitry.

The role of sex hormones, oral contraceptive use, and its parameters on visuospatial abilities, verbal fluency, and verbal memory.

Sex hormones can cross the blood-brain barrier and access brain regions underlying higher-order cognition. Containing synthetic sex hormones, oral contraceptives (OC) have been found to modulate visuospatial and verbal abilities, though inconsistencies have been found in the literature. Among possible explanations, certain OC use parameters (progestin androgenicity, synthetic hormone levels, duration of use) have not received consistent consideration.

A Year Through the COVID-19 Pandemic: Deleterious Impact of Hormonal Contraception on Psychological Distress in Women.

Background: Women are more at risk than men of suffering from psychological distress during disease outbreaks. Interestingly, no biological factors have been studied to explain this disparity in such contexts. Sex hormone variations induced by hormonal contraceptives (HC) have been associated with mental health vulnerabilities.

Exploring the sex and gender correlates of cognitive sex differences.

The correlates of cognitive sex differences are yet to be fully understood. Many biological and psychosocial factors modulate these cognitive abilities leading to mixed results in the scientific literature. The current study aims to explore the different parameters potentially influencing cognitive abilities acting in synergy.

Vicarious conditioned fear acquisition and extinction in child-parent dyads.

The biological mechanisms involved in fear transmission within families have been scarcely investigated in humans. Here we studied (1) how children acquired conditioned fear from observing their parent, or a stranger, being exposed to a fear conditioning paradigm, and (2) the subsequent fear extinction process in these children. Eighty-three child-parent dyads were recruited.

A review on how stress modulates fear conditioning: Let's not forget the role of sex and sex hormones.

Stress and fear are two fields of research that have evolved simultaneously. It was not until the eighties that these domains converged in order to better characterize the impact of stress on fear memory formation. Here, we reviewed the effects of stress occurring before fear acquisition on the main phases of fear conditioning protocols (acquisition training, extinction training, extinction retention test), with a specific focus on sex and sex hormones.