Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Natural Sciences, Department of Biology, Institute of Animal Cell and Systems Biology, Neuroendocrinology and Human Biology Unit, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
PeerJ. 2022 Feb 3;10:e12653. doi: 10.7717/peerj.12653. eCollection 2022.
During adolescence, gonadal hormones influence brain maturation and behavior. The impact of 17β-estradiol and testosterone on reinforcement learning was previously investigated in adults, but studies with adolescents are rare. We tested 89 German male and female adolescents (mean age ± sd = 14.7 ± 1.9 years) to determine the extent 17β-estradiol and testosterone influenced reinforcement learning capacity in a response time adjustment task. Our data showed, that 17β-estradiol correlated with an enhanced ability to speed up responses for reward in both sexes, while the ability to wait for higher reward correlated with testosterone primary in males. This suggests that individual differences in reinforcement learning may be associated with variations in these hormones during adolescence, which may shift the balance between a more reward- and an avoidance-oriented learning style.
在青春期，性腺激素会影响大脑的成熟和行为。先前已经有研究探讨了 17β-雌二醇和睾酮对成人强化学习的影响，但针对青少年的研究很少。我们测试了 89 名德国男性和女性青少年（平均年龄 ± 标准差=14.7±1.9 岁），以确定 17β-雌二醇和睾酮在反应时间调整任务中对强化学习能力的影响程度。我们的数据表明，17β-雌二醇与两性中因奖励而加快反应的能力增强相关，而等待更高奖励的能力则与睾酮主要在男性中相关。这表明，强化学习中的个体差异可能与青春期这些激素的变化有关，这可能会改变更注重奖励和避免导向的学习方式之间的平衡。
