Sex Hormone Mediation by Hormonal Contraceptives and Differences in Affective Recognition Memory Processing
Open Access
- Author:
- Dunlap, Margaret Davis
- Area of Honors:
- Interdisciplinary in Biology and Psychology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Victoria A Kazmerski, Thesis Supervisor
Victoria A Kazmerski, Thesis Honors Advisor
Michael A Campbell, Thesis Honors Advisor
Carol Leigh Wilson, Faculty Reader
James Warren Jr., Faculty Reader - Keywords:
- emotional memory
birth control
sex hormones
event-related potentials - Abstract:
- Given the expansive use of birth control in today’s society, it is important to understand all the potential side effects for consumers to make informed decisions about what to put in their body. The purpose of this study was to compare those on hormonal contraceptives with naturally cycling persons to determine if there were differences in emotional recognition memory and if those differences could be attributed to physiological changes as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). It was hypothesized that, because women on birth control have blunted sex hormone levels and diminished amygdala reactivity (Peterson & Cahill, 2015), their recognition would be less accurate and their reaction times longer than women not on birth control. It was also hypothesized that women high in estradiol would have better accuracy and slower reaction times than women low in estradiol. Regarding the ERPs, the hypotheses were that women on birth control would have smaller amplitudes in the N200 and P300 components. It was further hypothesized that women high in estradiol would have larger amplitudes than women low in estradiol. Lastly, it was predicted that the greatest differences between groups for both memory and ERP findings would be for high-arousal, unpleasant images as they were the most vivid of the stimuli. Overall, the hypotheses were supported in predicting that the women on birth control and the women low in estradiol exhibited reduced recognition accuracy and reduced amplitudes for the N200 and P300 ERP components. Additional findings regarding variables related to the stimuli are further discussed in this paper. It could be concluded from the study that there are differences in affective recognition memory due to the effects of birth control on sex hormones and, subsequently, on physiological activation as measured by ERPs.