Testosterone biases automatic memory processes in women towards potential mates

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Endocrinology

Background:

• Female mate choice involves evaluating potential partners to maximize reproductive fitness.
• Hormonal and reproductive states, particularly testosterone levels, can influence female choosiness and memory for masculinity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if testosterone administration biases memory processes in women towards male faces using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Main Methods:

• Healthy women in their early follicular phase received a single nasal dose of testosterone or a placebo in a double-blind, crossover design.
• Behavioral tasks assessed face categorization reaction times and recognition accuracy.
• fMRI was used to examine brain activity during memory encoding and retrieval.

Main Results:

• Testosterone increased reaction time differences in categorizing male versus female faces during encoding, but did not affect recognition accuracy or response bias.
• fMRI revealed testosterone shifted memory formation in the hippocampus and inferior temporal gyri towards male faces.
• Conversely, testosterone shifted memory formation in the left inferior frontal gyrus towards female faces, and hippocampal memory retrieval shifted towards male faces.

Conclusions:

• Testosterone biases memory processes, facilitating automatic encoding and retrieval of male faces in temporal regions and elaborate encoding of female faces in frontal regions.
• These findings suggest testosterone may enhance female mate sampling and comparison by biasing memory towards potential mates.