Exogenous testosterone affects early threat processing in socially anxious and healthy women

摘要

Highlights ? We applied single dose testosterone administration in a placebo-controlled design. ? Testosterone selectively affected early automatic emotional face processing. ? The results did not differ between socially anxious and non-anxious women. ? The findings support social motivational theories of testosterone. Abstract Testosterone plays an important role in social threat processing. Recent evidence suggests that testosterone administration has socially anxiolytic effects, but it remains unknown whether this involves early vigilance or later, more sustained, processing-stages. We investigated the acute effects of testosterone administration on social threat processing in 19 female patients with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and 19 healthy controls. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during an emotional Stroop task with subliminally presented faces. Testosterone induced qualitative changes in early ERPs (