Exogenous testosterone administration is associated with differential neural response to unfamiliar peer's and own caregiver's voice in transgender adolescents

Michele Morningstar, Department of Psychology, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada; Center for Biobehavioral Health, Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA; Centre for Neuroscience, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, Canada. Electronic address: michele.morningstar@queensu.ca.
Peyton Thomas, Center for Biobehavioral Health, Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA.
Avery M. Anderson, College of Nursing, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA; Center for Nursing Excellence, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA.
Whitney I. Mattson, Center for Biobehavioral Health, Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA.
Leena Nahata, Center for Biobehavioral Health, Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA; Division of Endocrinology, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA; Department of Pediatrics, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH, USA.
Scott F. Leibowitz, Section of Psychiatry, Nationwide Children's Hospital, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH, USA.
Diane Chen, Potocsnak Family Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine & Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences & Pediatrics, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA.
John F. Strang, Center for Neuroscience, Children's National Research Institute, Children's National Hospital, Washington, DC, USA; Departments of Pediatrics, Neurology, and Psychiatry, George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, USA.
Eric E. Nelson, Center for Biobehavioral Health, Abigail Wexner Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA; Department of Pediatrics, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH, USA.

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2-1-2023

Journal

Developmental cognitive neuroscience

Volume

59

DOI

10.1016/j.dcn.2022.101194

Keywords

Adolescence; Emotional prosody; Gender-affirming hormones; Social re-orientation; Testosterone; Transgender

Abstract

Changes in gonadal hormones during puberty are thought to potentiate adolescents' social re-orientation away from caregivers and towards peers. This study investigated the effect of testosterone on neural processing of emotional (vocal) stimuli by unfamiliar peers vs. parents, in transgender boys receiving exogenous testosterone as a gender-affirming hormone (GAH+) or not (GAH-). During fMRI, youth heard angry and happy vocal expressions spoken by their caregiver and an unfamiliar teenager. Youth also self-reported on closeness with friends and parents. Whole-brain analyses (controlling for age) revealed that GAH+ youth showed blunted neural response to caregivers' angry voices-and heightened response to unfamiliar teenage angry voices-in the anterior cingulate cortex. This pattern was reversed in GAH- youth, who also showed greater response to happy unfamiliar teenager vs. happy caregiver voices in this region. Blunted ACC response to angry caregiver voices-a pattern characteristic of GAH+ youth-was associated with greater relative closeness with friends over parents, which could index more "advanced" social re-orientation. Consistent with models of adolescent neurodevelopment, increases in testosterone during adolescence may shift the valuation of caregiver vs. peer emotional cues in a brain region associated with processing affective information.

Department

Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

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