Reduced short term memory in congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and its relationship to spatial and quantitative performance.

Girls and women with classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) experience elevated androgens prenatally and show increased male-typical development for certain behaviors. Further, individuals with CAH receive glucocorticoid (GC) treatment postnatally, and this GC treatment could have negative cognitive consequences. We investigated two alternative hypotheses, that: (a) early androgen exposure in females with CAH masculinizes (improves) spatial perception and quantitative abilities at which males typically outperform females, or (b) CAH is associated with performance decrements in these domains, perhaps due to reduced short-term-memory (STM).

Personality and congenital adrenal hyperplasia: possible effects of prenatal androgen exposure.

Influences of early androgen exposure on personality were investigated. Participants were either exposed to abnormal levels of androgens prenatally due to congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH, 40 females, 29 males), or were unaffected relative controls (29 females, 30 males). Compared to female controls, females with CAH were less tender-minded (p<.

Androgens and autistic traits: A study of individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

Testosterone promotes male-typical neural and behavioral development in non-human mammals. There is growing evidence that testosterone exerts similar influences on human development, although the range of behaviors affected is not completely known. This study examined the hypothesis that autistic traits are increased following prenatal exposure to abnormally high levels of testosterone caused by congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH).

Androgenic influences on neural asymmetry: Handedness and language lateralization in individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

This study tested the hypothesis that prenatal androgen levels influence hand preferences and language lateralization, two manifestations of neural asymmetry. Participants were individuals with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH, a genetic disorder that results in excess adrenal androgen production beginning prenatally) (40 females; 29 males) and their unaffected relatives (29 females; 30 males) who ranged in age from 12-45 years. The Edinburgh-Crovitz Inventory and the performance of five simple tasks (the Handedness Activities Test) were the measures of hand preferences, and a dichotic listening task composed of consonant-vowel nonsense syllables was the measure of language lateralization.

Masculinized finger length patterns in human males and females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia.

The ratio of the length of the second digit (2D) to the length of the fourth digit (4D) is greater in women than in men. Since androgens are involved in most somatic sex differences and since the sexual dimorphism in 2D:4D is stable from 2 years of age in humans, it was hypothesized that finger length pattern development might be affected by early androgen exposure. Human females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) are exposed prenatally to higher than normal levels of adrenal androgens, providing an opportunity to test the effects of early androgen exposure on digit ratios.