ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2013
Interactive effects of dehydroepiandrosterone and testosterone on cortical thickness during early brain development.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 65 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
65 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 107 citations in OpenAlex.
- Testosterone modulation of default mode network and its effects on cognitive function and mood in humans: a systematic review.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Pooled it
- Adrenarche, social cognition, and the development and evolution of autism spectrum traits.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- DHEA as a Biomarker of Stress: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- A systematic review of adrenarche as a sensitive period in neurobiological development and mental health.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2017Pooled it
- Individual-Level Associations of Cognition and Personality With Adolescent Mental Health Vary Across Brain and Environmental Profiles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The sex-specific role of adrenal androgens in youth psychopathology.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- A rise in prepubertal DHEA in the spiny mouse reveals the effect of adrenarche on the reproductive axis.BMC biology · 2026Article
- Anti-aging effects of the adrenal androgens dehydroepiandrosterone and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate: mechanisms of action and beneficial effects in older people.Endocrine journal · 2026Review
- The emergence of sex differences in primary pain during adolescence: a conceptual developmentally-oriented biopsychosocial model and opportunities for further investigation.BMC pediatrics · 2025Review
- Adrenocortical stem cells in health and disease.Nature reviews. Endocrinology · 2025Review
- Impact of Sex and Salivary Dehydroepiandrosterone on the Association Between Testosterone and Emotion Dysregulation.Developmental psychobiology · 2025Article
- Developmental shifts in testosterone levels are associated with alterations in the neural oscillatory dynamics serving selective attention.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Influence of dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate levels on the slower age-related decline in grey matter in younger women with polycystic ovary syndrome.Brain communications · 2025Article
- Disentangling the unique contributions of age, pubertal stage, and pubertal hormones to brain structure in childhood and adolescence.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2024Article
- Association of childhood dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate concentration, pubertal development, and DNA methylation at puberty-related genes.European journal of endocrinology · 2024Article
- Associations Among Birth Weight, Adrenarche, Brain Morphometry, and Cognitive Function in Preterm Children Ages 9 to 11 Years.Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging · 2024Article
- Brain structure in autoimmune Addison's disease.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- The gray matter morphology associated with the electrophysiological response to errors in individuals with high trait anxiety.International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology · 2023Article
- Sex and age variations in the impact of puberty on cortical thickness and associations with internalizing symptoms and suicidal ideation in early adolescence.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2023Article
- Prenatal paternal anxiety symptoms predict child DHEA levels and internalizing symptoms during adrenarche.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
5 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Humans and the great apes are the only species demonstrated to exhibit adrenarche, a key endocrine event associated with prepubertal increases in the adrenal production of androgens, most significantly dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) and to a certain degree testosterone. Adrenarche also coincides with the emergence of the prosocial and neurobehavioral skills of middle childhood and may therefore represent a human-specific stage of development. Both DHEA and testosterone have been reported in animal and in vitro studies to enhance neuronal survival and programmed cell death depending on the timing, dose, and hormonal context involved, and to potentially compete for the same signaling pathways. Yet no extant brain-hormone studies have examined the interaction between DHEA- and testosterone-related cortical maturation in humans. Here, we used linear mixed models to examine changes in cortical thickness associated with salivary DHEA and testosterone levels in a longitudinal sample of developmentally healthy children and adolescents 4-22 years old. DHEA levels were associated with increases in cortical thickness of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right temporoparietal junction, right premotor and right entorhinal cortex between the ages of 4-13 years, a period marked by the androgenic changes of adrenarche. There was also an interaction between DHEA and testosterone on cortical thickness of the right cingulate cortex and occipital pole that was most significant in prepubertal subjects. DHEA and testosterone appear to interact and modulate the complex process of cortical maturation during middle childhood, consistent with evidence at the molecular level of fast/nongenomic and slow/genomic or conversion-based mechanisms underlying androgen-related brain development.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.