Herrera Alexandra Ycaza, Velasco Ricardo, Faude Sophia, White Jessica D, Opitz Philipp C, Huang Ringo, Tu Kristie, Mather Mara
University of Southern California, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA.
University of Southern California, Department of Psychology, Los Angeles, CA, 90089, USA.
Neurobiol Stress. 2020 Aug 21;13:100248. doi: 10.1016/j.ynstr.2020.100248. eCollection 2020 Nov.
Taking hormonal contraceptives (HCs) affects the magnitude of the hormonal stress response and cognition. HCs are usually administered in a monthly cycle with both synthetic-hormone-containing and synthetic-hormone-absent phases. The synthetic hormones contained in HCs affect a wide range of neurophysiological systems, suggesting that effects of the medication might only be observed during the synthetic-hormone-containing phase of the HC cycle. To test this, women were seen twice, once during the hormone-present phase and once during the hormone-absent phase of the HC cycle. In each session, women performed an n-back working memory task to assess pre-stress performance outside of the magnetic resonance imaging scanner, were then exposed to cold pressor stress, and again completed the n-back task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. The free cortisol response to stress remained the same across the HC cycle. Women also performed comparably on the n-back task after stress exposure across the two phases. However, despite these similarities, women displayed greater disengagement of default mode network as task demands increased during the hormone-present phase only, a pattern more in line with working memory-related brain activation under non-stressful conditions reported in other studies. The results suggest that the synthetic hormones contained in HCs may mitigate stress-related disruptions of typical brain activation patterns during the hormone-present phase of the HC cycle, despite exhibiting comparable cortisol responses across the HC cycle. Additional research is required to determine the mechanisms contributing to, and the extent of, such mitigating effects.
服用激素避孕药（HCs）会影响激素应激反应的程度和认知。HCs通常按每月周期服用，包括含合成激素阶段和不含合成激素阶段。HCs中含有的合成激素会影响广泛的神经生理系统，这表明药物的作用可能仅在HC周期的含合成激素阶段才能观察到。为了验证这一点，研究人员对女性进行了两次观察，一次是在HC周期的激素存在阶段，另一次是在激素缺失阶段。在每次观察中，女性先在磁共振成像扫描仪外执行n-back工作记忆任务以评估应激前的表现，然后接受冷加压应激，之后在功能磁共振成像期间再次完成n-back任务。在整个HC周期中，对应激的游离皮质醇反应保持不变。在两个阶段的应激暴露后，女性在n-back任务中的表现也相当。然而，尽管存在这些相似之处，但仅在激素存在阶段，随着任务需求的增加，女性默认模式网络的脱离程度更大，这种模式更符合其他研究中报道的非应激条件下与工作记忆相关的大脑激活情况。结果表明，HCs中含有的合成激素可能会减轻HC周期激素存在阶段与应激相关的典型大脑激活模式的破坏，尽管在整个HC周期中皮质醇反应相当。需要进一步的研究来确定导致这种减轻作用的机制及其程度。
