Effects of sex steroid hormones on memory.

Many evidences have elucidated relevant mechanisms of action of estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone on cognition, including learning and memory processes, both in animal models and humans. This influence may depend on their modulator role on several neurotransmitter systems, and the extensive presence of their receptors in cerebral areas, involved in cognitive functions, including the amygdala, hippocampal formation, and cerebral cortex. The present brief review summarizes data of our research and others with the aim of clarifying, in mammals, the involvement of sex hormones on memory.

Electrophysiological and Behavioral Indices of the Role of Estrogens on Memory Processes for Emotional Faces in Healthy Young Women.

It is well known that estrogens influence cognitive activities, such as memory, and emotional states. The objective of the present study was to investigate the role of estrogens in the short-term memory processing of basic emotional face expressions, by means of event-related potentials (ERPs) and a recognition memory (RM) behavioral task. Healthy young women were divided into a periovulatory (PO) group, characterized by high levels of estrogens and low levels of progesterone, and an early follicular (EF) group, characterized by low levels of both estrogens and progesterone.

Transitionality in addiction: A "temporal continuum" hypotheses involving the aberrant motivation, the hedonic dysregulation, and the aberrant learning.

Addiction is a chronic compulsion and relapsing disorder. It involves several brain areas and circuits, which encode vary functions such as reward, motivation, and memory. Drug addiction is defined as a "pathological pattern of use of a substance", characterized by the loss of control on drug-taking-related behaviors, the pursuance of those behaviors even in the presence of negative consequences, and a strong motivated activity to assume substances.

Corrigendum: Editorial: Serotonin and Memory.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fphar.2016.

Evidence of estrogen modulation on memory processes for emotional content in healthy young women.

Purpose: It is well accepted that emotional content can affect memory, interacting with the encoding and consolidation processes. The aim of the present study was to verify the effects of estrogens in the interplay of cognition and emotion.

Methods: Images from the International Affective Pictures System, based on valence (pleasant, unpleasant and neutral), maintaining arousal constant, were viewed passively by two groups of young women in different cycle phases: a periovulatory group (PO), characterized by high level of estrogens and low level of progesterone, and an early follicular group (EF), characterized by low levels of both estrogens and progesterone.

When chocolate seeking becomes compulsion: gene-environment interplay.

Background: Eating disorders appear to be caused by a complex interaction between environmental and genetic factors, and compulsive eating in response to adverse circumstances characterizes many eating disorders.

Materials And Methods: We compared compulsion-like eating in the form of conditioned suppression of palatable food-seeking in adverse situations in stressed C57BL/6J and DBA/2J mice, two well-characterized inbred strains, to determine the influence of gene-environment interplay on this behavioral phenotype. Moreover, we tested the hypothesis that low accumbal D2 receptor (R) availability is a genetic risk factor of food compulsion-like behavior and that environmental conditions that induce compulsive eating alter D2R expression in the striatum.

Zaprinast impairs spatial memory by increasing PDE5 expression in the rat hippocampus.

In this work, we report the effect of post-training intraperitoneal administration of zaprinast on rat memory retention in the Morris water maze task that revealed a significant memory impairment at the intermediate dose of 10mg/kg. Zaprinast is capable of inhibiting both striatal and hippocampal PDE activity but to a different extent which is probably due to the different PDE isoforms expressed in these areas. To assess the possible involvement of cyclic nucleotides in rat memory impairment, we compared the effects obtained 30 min after the zaprinast injection with respect to 24h after injection by measuring both cyclic nucleotide levels and PDE activity.

Facial emotion recognition in schizophrenia: an event-related potentials study.

Previous studies extensively reported an impaired ability to recognize emotional stimuli in patients with schizophrenia. We used pictures from Ekman and Friesen in an event-related potentials study to investigate the neurophysiological correlates of the fear emotional processing compared with happiness in patients with schizophrenia versus healthy subjects. A significant lower P300 amplitude for fear processing but not for P100, N170 and N250 amplitude was found in schizophrenics compared to controls.

Habit learning and memory in mammals: behavioral and neural characteristics.

Goal-direct behavior and habit learning represent two forms of instrumental learning; whereas the former is rapidly acquired and regulated by its outcome, the latter is reflexive, elicited by antecedent stimuli rather than their consequences. Habit learning can be generally defined as the acquisition of associations between stimuli and responses. Habits are acquired via experience-dependent plasticity, occurring repeatedly over the course of days or years and becoming remarkably fixed.

Serotonergic 5-HT7 receptors and cognition.

The abundant distribution of serotonin (5-HT) in different areas of the central nervous system can explain the involvement of this neurotransmitter in the regulation of several functions, such as sleep, pain, feeding, and sexual and emotional behaviors. Moreover, the serotonergic system is also involved in other more complex roles, such as cognition, including learning and memory processes. Recent studies led to the discovery of various types and subtypes of receptors differentially associated to cognitive mechanisms.

Age-related differences in cortical activity during a visuo-spatial working memory task with facial stimuli.

Emotion, importantly displayed by facial expressions, is one of the most significant memory modulators. The interaction between memory and the different emotional valences change across lifespan, while young adults (YA) are expected to better recall negative events (Negativity Bias Hypothesis), older adults (OA) tend to focus on positive stimuli (Positivity Effect Hypothesis). This research work aims at verifying whether cortical electrical activity of these two age groups would also be differently influenced by emotional valences in a visuo-spatial working memory task.

Role of nicotine on cognitive and behavioral deficits in sepsis-surviving rats.

Sepsis and its complications are important causes of mortality in intensive care units and sepsis survivors may present long-term cognitive and emotional impairments, including memory deficits and anxiety symptoms. In the present study, we investigated whether repeated nicotine administration can affect the behavioral changes in sepsis-surviving rats. Male Wistar rats were divided in two groups: sham-operated and experimental sepsis induced by cecal ligation and puncture (CLP).

Estrogen, cognitive functions and emotion: an overview on humans, non-human primates and rodents in reproductive years.

Accumulating evidence has highlighted a number of important, global issues regarding the influence of estrogen on emotion and cognitive functions,including learning and memory processes, both in animal models and humans. The influence of estrogen on cognition and emotion can be explained by taking into account its modulator role on several neurotransmitter systems, acetylcholine in particular, but also catecholamines,serotonin and GABA in rodents, primates and humans. Another reason may lie in the wide spread presence of the two classes (a and~) of estrogen receptors in many brain regions involved in emotion and cognition, including the hippocampal formation, amygdala and cerebral cortex.

Estrogens and memory in physiological and neuropathological conditions.

Ovarian hormones can influence brain regions crucial to higher cognitive functions, such as learning and memory, acting at structural, cellular and functional levels, and modulating neurotransmitter systems. Among the main effects of estrogens, the protective role that they may play against the deterioration of cognitive functions occurring with normal aging is of essential importance. In fact, during the last century, there has been a 30 years increase in female life expectancy, from 50 to 83 years; however, the mean age of spontaneous menopause remains stable, 50-51 years, with variability related to race and ethnicity.

Sex-related memory recall and talkativeness for emotional stimuli.

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.

Working and reference memory across the estrous cycle of rat: a long-term study in gonadally intact females.

The results of many studies conducted over the past two decades suggested a role of estrogen on mammal's ability to learn and remember. In the present paper, we analyzed the influence that the endogenous fluctuation of estrogen, naturally present across the different phases of estrous cycle of female rats, can exert over the performance of tasks utilized to assess memory. In particular, we analyzed the performances in an eight arms radial maze task, dependent upon working memory, and in a water maze (WM) task, dependent upon spatial reference memory.

Estrogen and cognitive functions.

Although the effects of estrogen on sexual behavior in mammals are well known, its role on other types of behavior, including cognition, have only recently been recognized. This review summarizes work conducted in our laboratory and others with the aim of identifying the effects of estrogen on cognitive functions. The first section will briefly describe the neurobiology of estrogen.

Working memory for emotional facial expressions: role of estrogen in humans and non-human primates.

In recent years, numerous studies focusing on the role of sex steroid hormones on neuropsychological functions have been reported. The influence of estrogens on cognition can be explained by the widespread presence of estrogen receptors (ERs) in limbic and cortical areas, and the modulator role of estrogens on numerous neurotransmitter systems. There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that estrogen can enhance memory processes and improve performance in working memory (WM) tasks, including face-tasks, delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) and delayed non-matching-to-sample (DNMTS).

Working memory for emotional facial expressions: role of the estrogen in young women.

Physiological hormonal fluctuations during the menstrual cycle, postpartum, and menopause have been implicated in the modulation of mood, cognition, and affective disorders. Taking into account that women's performance in memory tasks can also fluctuate with circulating hormones levels across the menstrual cycle, the cognitive performance in a working memory task for emotional facial expressions, using the six basic emotions as stimuli in the delayed matching-to-sample, was evaluated in young women in different phases of the menstrual cycle. Our findings suggest that high levels of estradiol in the follicular phase could have a negative effect on delayed matching-to-sample working memory task, using stimuli with emotional valence.

Effect of 5-HT(7) antagonist SB-269970 in the modulation of working and reference memory in the rat.

It has been established that serotonergic pathways project to cerebral areas involved in learning and memory and that serotonin (5-HT) receptor agonists and antagonists modify these processes. Indeed, most of the 5-HT receptors characterized so far, i.e.

5-HT(7) receptors in the modulation of cognitive processes.

The abundance of serotonin (5-HT) in the central nervous system can explain its role in the regulation of various functions, such as sleep, feeding, sexuality, emotional status, and pain. In addition, 5-HT localized in "cognitive pathways" with hippocampus and frontal cortex as the main target structures, is involved in learning and memory processes. Recent studies led to the discovery of various types and subtypes of receptors, differentially associated to cognitive mechanisms.