| Abstract [eng] |
Oral contraception (OC) is used by more than 100 million women globally. Therefore, it is important to consider the unintended, potentially far-reaching effects associated with OC use on women's neurobiology psychology, and behaviour. OCs alter women’s hormonal profile by substantially suppressing endogenous levels of sex steroids through the inhibition of the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis and by adding effects of synthetic steroids. Previous research show that sex steroids are closely linked to women’s emotional well-being and cognitive functioning. Studies reveal that OC use may be associated with structural and functional changes in the brain areas related to cognitive functions (e.g. verbal memory, face recognition, verbal fluency, and visuospatial abilities) and affective processing. However, evidence of OC effect on the nervous system is often contradictory and inconclusive. The aim of the work presented in the dissertation was to evaluate the influence of OCs on female cognitive functions and emotional processing in a cohort of healthy females of reproductive age. We compared the performance in the tasks assessing working memory and spatial abilities, and the electrophysiological reactivity to affective images between naturally cycling women and OC users. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study demonstrating that OC users and nonusers may employ different strategies to perform the mental rotation task. The performance did not differ between the groups in the working memory task. The results suggest altered affective picture processing among OC users with significantly blunted brain activity to the highly unpleasant images. |
