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. 2014 Jan 8;9(1):e83929.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0083929. eCollection 2014.

The influence of sex steroids on structural brain maturation in adolescence

P Cédric M P Koolschijn  1 , Jiska S Peper  2 , Eveline A Crone  3
Affiliations

The influence of sex steroids on structural brain maturation in adolescence

P Cédric M P Koolschijn et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Puberty reflects a period of hormonal changes, physical maturation and structural brain reorganization. However, little attention has been paid to what extent sex steroids and pituitary hormones are associated with the refinement of brain maturation across adolescent development. Here we used high-resolution structural MRI scans from 215 typically developing individuals between ages 8-25, to examine the association between cortical thickness, surface area and (sub)cortical brain volumes with luteinizing hormone, testosterone and estradiol, and pubertal stage based on self-reports. Our results indicate sex-specific differences in testosterone related influences on gray matter volumes of the anterior cingulate cortex after controlling for age effects. No significant associations between subcortical structures and sex hormones were found. Pubertal stage was not a stronger predictor than chronological age for brain anatomical differences. Our findings indicate that sex steroids are associated with cerebral gray matter morphology in a sex specific manner. These hormonal and morphological differences may explain in part differences in brain development between boys and girls.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Overlap of testosterone and estradiol levels (corrected for age), age effects corrected for testosterone levels and general age-effects on cortical thickness.
A. Estradiol (pmol) related thinning. B. Testosterone (Zlog) related thinning. C. Age-related thinning corrected for testosterone levels (Zlog). D. Age-related thinning. FDR-corrected, p<.05 in all figures.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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