ArticlePsychoneuroendocrinology2017
Dehydroepiandrosterone impacts working memory by shaping cortico-hippocampal structural covariance during development.
Article in Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 27 citations in OpenAlex.
- DHEA as a Biomarker of Stress: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Dehydroepiandrosterone and Dehydroepiandrosterone Sulfate in Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2019Pooled it
- Elevated cortisol/DHEA ratio mediates the association between symptom severity and working memory impairment in drug-naive, first-episode OCD.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Cognitive performance in young adult women with a history of premature adrenarche.Pediatric research · 2025Article
- Recent advances in research on common targets of neurological and sex hormonal influences on asthma.Clinical and translational allergy · 2025Review
- Mothers' prenatal distress accelerates adrenal pubertal development in daughters.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024Article
- Multiple exposures to heavy metals and changes in steroid hormones production in 4-year-old children.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2023Article
- Brain structure in autoimmune Addison's disease.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Prenatal paternal anxiety symptoms predict child DHEA levels and internalizing symptoms during adrenarche.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Positive or negative environmental modulations on human brain development: the morpho-functional outcomes of music training or stress.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2023Review
- Family environment and development in children adopted from institutionalized care.Pediatric research · 2022Article
- The effects of puberty and its hormones on subcortical brain development.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2021Article
- Update on adrenarche.Current opinion in pediatrics · 2020Review
- A lex naturalis delineates components of a human-specific, adrenal androgen-dependent, p53-mediated 'kill switch' tumor suppression mechanism.Endocrine-related cancer · 2020Review
- DHEAS and Human Development: An Evolutionary Perspective.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2020Article
- Hunting for What Works: Adolescents in Addiction Treatment.Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research · 2019Review
- Age-specific associations between oestradiol, cortico-amygdalar structural covariance, and verbal and spatial skills.Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2019Article
- Sex-specific contribution of DHEA-cortisol ratio to prefrontal-hippocampal structural development, cognitive abilities and personality traits.Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2019Article
- Amygdalar reactivity is associated with prefrontal cortical thickness in a large population-based sample of adolescents.PloS one · 2019Article
- Role of DHEA and cortisol in prefrontal-amygdalar development and working memory.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 9 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Existing studies suggest that dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) may be important for human brain development and cognition. For example, molecular studies have hinted at the critical role of DHEA in enhancing brain plasticity. Studies of human brain development also support the notion that DHEA is involved in preserving cortical plasticity. Further, some, though not all, studies show that DHEA administration may lead to improvements in working memory in adults. Yet these findings remain limited by an incomplete understanding of the specific neuroanatomical mechanisms through which DHEA may impact the CNS during development. Here we examined associations between DHEA, cortico-hippocampal structural covariance, and working memory (216 participants [female=123], age range 6-22 years old, mean age: 13.6 +/-3.6 years, each followed for a maximum of 3 visits over the course of 4 years). In addition to administering performance-based, spatial working memory tests to these children, we also collected ecological, parent ratings of working memory in everyday situations. We found that increasingly higher DHEA levels were associated with a shift toward positive insular-hippocampal and occipito-hippocampal structural covariance. In turn, DHEA-related insular-hippocampal covariance was associated with lower spatial working memory but higher overall working memory as measured by the ecological parent ratings. Taken together with previous research, these results support the hypothesis that DHEA may optimize cortical functions related to general attentional and working memory processes, but impair the development of bottom-up, hippocampal-to-cortical connections, resulting in impaired encoding of spatial cues.
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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.