This study builds upon our group's work using dense-sampling methods to study the impact of hormone fluctuations across the menstrual cycle on brain structure and function. Steroid hormone production also follows a daily sinusoidal pattern, with a peak in testosterone between 6 and 7 A.M. and nadir between 7 and 8 P.M. To capture the brain's response to diurnal changes in hormone production, we carried out a companion precision imaging study of a healthy adult man who completed MRI and venipuncture every 12–24 h across 30 consecutive days.
Results confirmed robust diurnal fluctuations in testosterone, 17β-estradiol-the primary form of estrogen-and cortisol. Standardized regression analyses revealed widespread associations between testosterone, estradiol, and cortisol concentrations and whole-brain patterns of coherence. In particular, functional connectivity in the Dorsal Attention Network was coupled with diurnally fluctuating hormones. Further, comparing dense-sampling datasets between a man and a naturally cycling woman revealed that fluctuations in sex hormones are tied to patterns of whole-brain coherence in both sexes and to a heightened degree in the male. These results enhance our understanding that steroid hormones are rapid neuromodulators and provide evidence that diurnal changes in steroid hormones are associated with patterns of whole-brain functional connectivity.
Publications:
Publications:
- Grotzinger, H., Pritschet, L., Shapturenka, P., Santander, T., Murata, E. M., & Jacobs, E. G. (2024). Diurnal fluctuations in steroid hormones tied to variation in intrinsic functional connectivity in a densely sampled male. Journal of Neuroscience, 44(22).
- Murata, E. M., Pritschet, L., Grotzinger, H., Taylor, C. M., & Jacobs, E. G. (2024). Circadian Rhythms Tied to Changes in Brain Morphology in a Densely Sampled Male. Journal of Neuroscience, 44(38).
Presentations:
- Serio, B., Yilmaz, D., Pritschet, L., Grotzinger, H., Jacobs, E.G., Eickhoff, S.B., Valk, S.L. “Intraindividual variability in functional cortical organization relates to hormone levels and stress”. Poster presented at the Organization for Human Brain Mapping Annual Meeting, Seoul, Korea (June, 2024).
- Baracchini, G., da Silva Castanheria, J., Pritschet, L., Santander, T., Grotzinger, H., Jacobs, E., Chakravarty, M., Spreng, R.N. “Beyond unimodal data: an fMRI-electrophysiological-hormonal account of brain signal variance”. Poster presented at the Organization for Human Brain Mapping Annual Meeting, Seoul, Korea (June, 2024).
- Grotzinger, H., Pritschet, L., Santander, T., Jacobs, E.G. “Diurnal fluctuations in testosterone tied to variation in intrinsic functional connectivity in a densely sampled male”. Poster presented at the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences 16th Annual Meeting, Marina del Rey, CA (May, 2022).
- Grotzinger, H., Pritschet, L., Santander, T., Jacobs, E.G. “Diurnal fluctuations in testosterone tied to variation in intrinsic functional connectivity in a densely sampled male”. Poster presented at the Society of Biological Psychiatry, New Orleans, LA (April, 2022).
- Grotzinger, H., Pritschet, L., Santander, T., Jacobs, E.G. “Diurnal fluctuations in testosterone tied to variation in intrinsic functional connectivity in a densely sampled male”. Virtual poster presented at the Society for Neuroscience 50th Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL (November, 2021).