The Berenbaum Lab
Sex and gender matter
Imaging Siblings Study (iSIBs)
How does prenatal androgen affect brain structure?
In 2014 we brought a group of women and men with CAH and their close relatives to Penn State for the Imaging Siblings Study (iSIBs). We are very grateful to them for their continuing participation in our work.
We studied 16 women with CAH and 8 of their sisters, and 3 men with CAH and 4 of their brothers (all between ages 18-36 years). Over the course of two days, participants completed a battery of tests questionnaires on the computer or on paper, and a series of tasks in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. We looked at the anatomy of their brains and the ways that their brains were active when they were resting and when they were solving tasks. We are in the process of analyzing the data from this study.
We are examining how early androgen exposure shapes the development of brain structure and functioning that underlies behavior, with a particular focus on characteristics that are related to psychological problems that show sex differences. The aim of iSIBs is to understand how early androgens influence response to reward and negative emotion.
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