ArticleAmerican journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council
Testosterone and male cognitive performance in Tsimane forager-horticulturalists.
Article in American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Increases in regional brain volume across two native South American male populations.GeroScience · 2024Article
- Poor Oral Health Is Associated With Inflammation, Aortic Valve Calcification, and Brain Volume Among Forager-Farmers.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2024Article
- Morphometric traits predict educational attainment independently of socioeconomic background.BMC public health · 2019Article
- The Tsimane Health and Life History Project: Integrating anthropology and biomedicine.Evolutionary anthropology · 2017Article
- Apolipoprotein E4 is associated with improved cognitive function in Amazonian forager-horticulturalists with a high parasite burden.FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · 2017Article
- Cognitive performance across the life course of Bolivian forager-farmers with limited schooling.Developmental psychology · 2017Article
- High resting metabolic rate among Amazonian forager-horticulturalists experiencing high pathogen burden.American journal of physical anthropology · 2016Article
- No Sex or Age Difference in Dead-Reckoning Ability among Tsimane Forager-Horticulturalists.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
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Abstract
objectiveTestosterone plays a vital role in brain function and behavior. Among humans, age-related decline in testosterone is associated with declining cognitive functioning, and aging men with higher testosterone maintain better cognitive performance. However, most research focuses on industrialized populations with widespread access to formal schooling, high testosterone, and low parasite and pathogen load. We examine whether men's testosterone is associated with cognitive performance among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia despite relatively lower levels of testosterone and higher immune burden.
methodsNinety-four Tsimane men aged 36-86 (median = 49) participated in a cognitive battery (assessing short- and long-term recall, digit span, semantic memory, and visual scan) and provided urine and blood samples to measure testosterone and markers of immune activation. Linear mixed effects regressions were used to model associations between cognitive performance and testosterone, controlling for age, years of schooling, Spanish fluency, and village residence. For a subset (n = 66) we included immune activation markers to examine mediator effects.
resultsTestosterone is positively associated with short- and long-term verbal memory (β = 0.267, P = 0.018; β = 0.326, P = 0.005 respectively) and visual scanning (β = 0.306, P = 0.008) after controlling for potential confounders. Markers of immune activation were negatively associated with cognitive function, but did not change the associations between testosterone and cognitive performance.
conclusionTsimane men show positive associations between testosterone and cognitive performance, particularly for recall and visual scanning, despite higher immune burden. Testosterone may help motivate both physical and cognitive capacities that were essential for extracting the difficult-to-acquire, high-quality resources upon which humans relied over evolutionary history.
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