The effect of gonadal hormones and gender on anxiety and emotional learning.

摘要: Disorders of anxiety and fear dysregulation are highly prevalent. These disorders affect women approximately 2 times more than they men, occur predominately during a woman's reproductive years, especially prevalent at hormonal flux. This implies that gender differences sex steroids play key role in the regulation fear. However, underlying mechanism by which these factors regulate emotional states either is still largely unknown. review discusses animal studies describing sex-differences gonadal steroid effects on learning. The hormones modulation anxiety, with particular emphasis progesterone's ability to reduce responsiveness female rats corticotropin releasing factor sex-specific effect testosterone reduction male rats, discussed. In addition, hormone learning considered preliminary data presented showing estrogen (E2) disrupts probably through antagonistic ERα ERβ activation.