Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, Centre for Child Health Research, University of Western Australia, Subiaco, Western Australia, Australia.
Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2010 Sep;35(8):1259-64. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2010.02.007. Epub 2010 Mar 4.
Prenatal exposure to testosterone has been shown to affect fetal brain maturation as well as postnatal cognition and behavior in animal studies. Although there are well-established sex-differences in the use of social communication (or 'pragmatic language') in humans, there has been limited investigation of the association between fetal testosterone exposure and postnatal pragmatic language ability. In this prospective study, pragmatic language skills, assessed using a pragmatic language score (PLS), were measured in 78 girls aged 10 years and correlated with testosterone levels in umbilical cord blood. A measure of the biologically active, 'free' fraction of testosterone, the free androgen index (FAI), was positively correlated with the PLS (R=.3). Regression analyses showed that the FAI was a significant, positive predictor of pragmatic language difficulties in girls after controlling for maternal and infant-health variables (B=0.02, 95% confidence interval=0.01-0.04, p=0.02). This is the first prospective study to identify an association between early life testosterone exposure and pragmatic language difficulties in girls. These novel findings are discussed with reference to the 'extreme male-brain' theory of autism.
产前暴露于睾酮已被证明会影响胎儿大脑成熟以及动物研究中的产后认知和行为。尽管在人类中，社会交流（或“语用语言”）的使用存在明确的性别差异，但对胎儿睾酮暴露与产后语用语言能力之间的关联的研究有限。在这项前瞻性研究中，使用语用语言评分（PLS）评估了 78 名 10 岁女孩的语用语言技能，并与脐带血中的睾酮水平相关联。睾酮的生物活性“游离”分数的一个度量，游离雄激素指数（FAI）与 PLS 呈正相关（R=.3）。回归分析表明，在控制了母婴健康变量后，FAI 是女孩语用语言困难的显著正预测因子（B=0.02，95%置信区间=0.01-0.04，p=0.02）。这是第一项前瞻性研究，确定了早期生活中的睾酮暴露与女孩语用语言困难之间的关联。这些新发现与自闭症的“极端男性大脑”理论有关。
