Women have a small but important amount of testosterone in their bodies. Sina Radke with the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour at Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, and colleagues found that the testosterone in women is a very active part of the perception of social threat. The discovery may produce new pathways to treat social anxiety and depression in women and men.
The researchers examined the effect of an extra dose of testosterone on the brain function of 54 healthy women. The women were considered physically healthy and mentally healthy through tests administered prior to the testosterone test. Each woman responded to an angry face or a happy face while wearing an fMRI monitor. The fMRI showed that added testosterone made the majority of women more likely to approach an angry face than women that did not receive any added testosterone. The same response had previously been observed in men.
The presence of testosterone was judged to have a dependence on the social situation by the researchers and was not an inherent function of aggression produced by testosterone in women. The women that received added testosterone were more motivated to approach an angry face and less interested in a happy face based on the cumulative response of the group versus women that did not receive any additional testosterone. No additional activity in any part of the brain except the amygdala was found using fMRI.
The study shows that hormones are not the rulers of people’s behavior. A basic human response that involves a social setting was found to depend on a decision making process that superseded the effects of the hormone testosterone. The study indicates that any concept of submissiveness or aggression based in women based on hormones alone must be abandoned.
