Pain perception to the cold pressor test during the menstrual cycle in relation to estrogen levels and a comparison with men.

Animal and human research has shown that pain sensitivity changes during the menstrual cycle. This has sometimes been ascribed to hormonal variations. The aim of the present study was to examine how perception of pain, induced by the cold pressor test to the dominant hand, was related to gender and phases of the menstrual cycle. A repeated-measures design was used, where twenty-two female students participated at two different phases of the menstrual cycle (days 2-4 and days 20-24). A control group of nineteen male students participated on two occasions, separated by a three week period. The cycle phase during which each woman began her participation was randomized. Pain was induced using the cold pressor test. Pain threshold was determined as the duration of time between when the subject first reported pain and exposure to the painful stimulus. Pain tolerance was determined as the duration of time until the subject withdraw her/his hand from the test water because the pain was too intensive. The results showed that men tolerated significantly greater pain than women. Women's pain threshold was significantly higher during the second phase of the menstrual cycle. Systolic pressure was higher in men than women, increasing more in men in response to cold pressor testing than women. Further research, including measurements of plasma hormone levels during the menstrual cycle, is needed to clarify the role played by estrogens in pain perception.     

Pain perception to the cold pressor test during the menstrual cycle in relation to estrogen levels and a comparison with men

Animal and human research has shown that pain sensitivity changes during the menstrual cycle. This has sometimes been ascribed to hormonal variations. The aim of the present study was to examine how perception of pain, induced by the cold pressor test to the dominant hand, was related to gender and phases of the menstrual cycle. A repeated-meausres design was used, where twenty-two female students participated at two different phases of the menstrual cycle (days 2–4 and days 20–24). A control group of nineteen male students participated on two occasions, separated by a three week period. The cycle phase during which each woman began her participation was randomized. Pain was induced using the cold pressor test. Pain threshold was determined as the duration of time between when the subject first reported pain and exposure to the painful stimulus. Pain tolerance was determined as the duration of time until the subject withdraw her/his hand from the test water because the pain was too intensive. The results showed that men tolerated significantly greater pain than women. Women’s pain threshold was significantly higher during the second phase of the menstrual cycle. Systolic pressure was higher in men than women, increasing more in men in response to cold pressor testing than women. Further research, including measurments of plasma hormone levels during the menstrual cycle, is needed to clarify the role played by estrogens in pain perception.     

Cyclic changes in pain perception: An ROC analysis

The rating scale responses of three groups of men and women to thermal and painful radiant heat stimuli were studied over a 4-week period. Receiver operating characteristic curve parameters were computed for each of the phases of the menstrual cycle. Women with normal menstrual periods experienced a heightened sensitivity to pain during ovulation. This effect was absent in women using oral contraceptive pills and in men. The findings demonstrate that past reports of pain threshold changes in association with menstrual phase were basically sensory effects and not just a result of shifts in the observer’s criteria for reporting pain. In addition, sex differences in pain perception were found only when men were compared with women who were ovulating.     

Frontal EEG asymmetry and premenstrual dysphoric symptomatology

Resting frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetry has been hypothesized to tap a diathesis toward depression or other emotion-related psychopathology. Frontal EEG asymmetry was assessed in college women who reported high (n = 12) or low (n = 11) levels of premenstrual negative affect. Participants were assessed during both the follicular and the late luteal phases of the menstrual cycle. Women reporting low premenstrual dysphoric symptomatology exhibited greater relative left frontal activity at rest than did women high in premenstrual dysphoric symptomatology, an effect that was not qualified by phase of cycle. Although women with extreme levels of symptomatology were assessed, the question of whether such symptoms qualified for premenstrual dysphoric disorder criteria was not assessed. These results are consistent with a diathesis-stress model for premenstrual dysphoric symptomatology.     

Symptom Attributions Across the Menstrual Cycle in Women with Panic Disorder

Women with panic disorder are likely to experience greater menstrual-specific symptoms (e.g., headaches, cramps) as well as more panic/anxiety-related symptoms (e.g., dizziness, faintness, chest pain, heart pounding), and may be more likely to experience these symptoms during the premenstrual phase. This study examines the attributions women make about the somatic and affective symptoms they experience during the menstrual cycle. Using a 30-day prospective design, women with and without panic disorder monitored physical and affective symptoms. Participants reported on severity of various symptoms and a primary cause for each symptom (menstrual cycle-related, panic/anxiety related, stress-related, health-related). Women with panic disorder reported more panic attacks during the premenstrual phase compared to other cycle phases. They also reported more severe affective and panic symptoms during the premenstrual phase compared to other phases, but did not significantly differ from the comparison group in menstrual symptom severity across the three cycle phases. Although women with panic disorder attributed more panic/anxiety-related causes for their symptoms across the menstrual cycle, they were able to discriminate between panic/anxiety causes and menstrual cycle-related causes. Women with panic disorder may benefit for therapy that focuses on their exacerbation of panic symptoms during the premenstrual phase.     

神经质程度和月经周期对女性主观情绪和生理反应的影响

分别选取两组神经质程度高、低女性16名和25名, 考察两组被试在月经周期不同阶段(经期、卵泡晚期、黄体中晚期)的激素(雌二醇、孕酮)波动以及观看情绪视频(中性、搞笑、悲伤、愤怒)的主观情绪感受和生理反应的差异。结果显示高神经质女性在月经周期中对负性情绪视频的主观情绪和生理反应变化明显, 黄体中晚期对愤怒视频主观情绪体验更低, 对悲伤视频生理反应更小, 而低神经质女性的情绪反应不受月经周期影响。研究表明高神经质女性的情绪反应更易受月经周期影响, 这可能与其对孕酮水平波动的敏感性高有关。     

Menstrual cycle, beta-endorphins, and pain sensitivity in premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

This study examined pain sensitivity and pain modularity mechanisms (e.g., beta-endorphin levels, blood pressure) in women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD; n = 27) and healthy controls (n = 27) during the follicular and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle. Physiological measures were taken during rest and ischemic pain testing. In both cycle phases, PMDD women (a) displayed lower resting cortisol and beta-endorphin levels and (b) exhibited shorter pain threshold and tolerance times and greater pain unpleasantness ratings during pain. PMDD women also reported greater pain unpleasantness and intensity and had lower beta-endorphin levels in their luteal phase and tended to display higher blood pressure levels at rest and during pain testing. Results suggest that endogenous opioids may be pathophysiologically relevant to PMDD and that the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis may modulate pain sensitivity in PMDD.     

Pre‐menstrual period: Do women really consume more?

The aim of this study was to investigate female consumption behavior during the different menstrual cycle phases, regarding impulsivity, regret, willingness to pay, and purchase intention for hedonic and utilitarian products. This paper focuses on the gap between literary theory and common sense beliefs. A survey was conducted to 405 women. The results revealed no idiosyncrasy in behavior during the different cycle phases. Impulsive behavior explains the perception of regret; however, hormonal changes throughout the month could not support this correlation, which suggests the reported behavior to be different from the actual one. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

MOOD FLUCTUATIONS

Mood fluctuations in women and men were studied both prospectively and retrospectively to determine whether cyclic changes occur over phases of the menstrual cycle, lunar cycle, and/or days of the week. The participants (15 women using oral contraceptives, 12 normally cycling women, and 15 men), who did not know the purpose of the study, recorded the pleasantness, arousal, and stability of their moods daily for 70 days (concurrent data). Later they recalled (retrospective data) their average mood for each day of the week and phase of the menstrual cycle (women only). The only evidence of mood fluctuation over the menstrual cycle in the concurrent reports was that normally cycling women reported more pleasant moods in the follicular and menstrual phase than did men and women on oral contraceptives. Women's moods fluctuated less over the menstrual cycle than over days of the week. Recollections of menstrual mood changes differed from actual changes: Women recalled more pleasant moods in the follicular phase and more unpleasant moods in the premenstrual and menstrual phases than they had reported concurrently. Bias also was evident in recollections of weekday mood fluctuations: Weekend highs were exaggerated and Monday blues were reported even though they were not reported concurrently. There was no evidence of mood fluctuations over the lunar cycle and the groups did not differ in mood stability. The retrospective reporting bias for both the mensural cycle and days of week suggests the influence of stereotypes about moods. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Female sexual orientation and menstrual influences on person perception

Heterosexual women have previously been shown to display enhanced sensitivity to information that is both reproductively- and sexually-relevant (e.g., sexually mature male faces) during phases of high fertility. In the present study, homosexual women who maintained a regular menstrual cycle and did not use hormonal contraceptives completed a sex-categorization task at periods of high and low fertility within their menstrual cycle. For homosexual women there is a separation between reproductively-relevant (i.e., sexually mature males) and sexually-relevant (i.e., sexually mature females) targets. Our participants showed enhanced sensitivity to sexually-relevant information (i.e., female faces) at high fertility but showed no fluctuation in sensitivity to reproductively-relevant information (i.e., male faces) across testing sessions. These findings are considered in terms of adaptive person perception and the impact of sexual desire on mate preferences.     

Effects of menstrual cycle phase on aggression measured in the laboratory

This study investigated the effects of menstrual cycle phase on aggression in two groups of women, which differed in the severity of their self-reported perimenstrual symptoms. A low- and a high-symptom group were recruited using the Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ) to define the groups. Twenty-two subjects (11 low and 11 high symptom) participated across one menstrual cycle: during the premenstrual, menstrual, midfollicular, and ovulatory phases. The Point Subtraction Aggression Paradigm was used to assess aggression on each day of participation. There were three main findings; a) rates of aggressive responding did not vary across phases of the menstrual cycle; b) the high-symptom group emitted higher rates of aggressive responding across the menstrual cycle than did the low-symptom group; and c) rates of aggressive responding correlated with the MDQ's behavioral and psychological scales and not the somatic scales. These findings indicate that the menstrual cycle phase does not differentially affect this laboratory measure of aggression. The differences found between the two symptom groups parallel a few reports indicating that women who differ in retrospectively reported mood and behavioral changes related to their menstrual cycle also differ on a number of other psychometric measures. Aggr. Behav. 24:9–26, 1998. © 1998 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Menstrual cycle-related changes of functional cerebral asymmetries in fine motor coordination

Fluctuating sex hormone levels during the menstrual cycle have been shown to affect functional cerebral asymmetries in cognitive domains. These effects seem to result from the neuromodulatory properties of sex hormones and their metabolites on interhemispheric processing. The present study was carried out to investigate whether functional cerebral asymmetries in fine motor coordination as reflected by manual asymmetries are also susceptible to natural sex hormonal variations during the menstrual cycle. Sixteen right-handed women with a regular menstrual cycle performed a finger tapping paradigm consisting of two conditions (simple, sequential) during the low hormone menstrual phase and the high estrogen and progesterone luteal phase. To validate the luteal phase, saliva levels of free progesterone (P) were analysed using chemiluminescence assays. As expected, normally cycling women showed a substantial decrease in manual asymmetries in a more demanding sequential tapping condition involving four fingers compared with simple (repetitive) finger tapping. This reduction in the degree of dominant (right) hand manual asymmetries was evident during the luteal phase. During the menstrual phase, however, manual asymmetries were even reversed in direction, indicating a slight advantage in favour of the non-dominant (left) hand. These findings suggest that functional cerebral asymmetries in fine motor coordination are affected by sex hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle, probably via hormonal modulations of interhemispheric interaction.     

Person perception across the menstrual cycle: hormonal influences on social-cognitive functioning

Women's reactions to men shift during the menstrual cycle. For example, during the phase of high conception risk, women prefer men with masculinized facial features. A favored explanation for this effect is that women display an enhanced sensitivity to stimuli that have significant reproductive relevance during the phase of the menstrual cycle in which conception risk is high. Consistent with this viewpoint, the present research demonstrated that women's cycle–dependent attentiveness to "maleness" also extends to basic aspects of the person–perception process. Specifically, during the phase of high conception risk, women displayed an enhanced ability both to categorize men and to access associated category–related (i.e., stereotypic) material from semantic memory. The implications of these findings for contemporary treatments of person perception are considered.     

Menstrual cycle as focus of study and self-reports of moods and behaviors

Retrospective questionnaires show cyclical variations in moods and behaviors across the menstrual cycle. However, results obtained from daily mood questionnaires are inconsistent. In the present study, which ran for 11 weeks, self-report measures of menstrual symptomatology, using the 8-factor Moos (1968, 1969 a,c) Menstrual Distress Questionnaire (MDQ), were investigated. The MDQ was administered under conditions that made the menstrual cycle a salient (retrospective questionnaire) or not a salient (daily questionnaire) part of the study. The study included women who were taking and not taking oral contraceptives. A 2×3 analysis of variance (with the two groups of women and three menstrual cycle phases as independent variables) yielded broad cyclical variations only in the menstrual cycle salient condition. When the menstrual cycle was not a salient part of the study, only the pain factor reached significant cyclical variation (p<.01).A 2×3 analysis of variance (with the two types of questionnaires and three menstrual cycle phases as independent variables) indicated that for women not taking oral contraceptives the two questionnaires differed on pain (p<.01), concentration (p<.01), autonomic reaction (p<.05), and water retention (p<.01). Phase effects were significant on all factors, with largest cyclical variations in the menstrual cycle salient condition. A similar analysis for women taking oral contraceptives yielded fewer significant differences. These results suggest that questionnaires that make the menstrual cycle a salient part of the study may exaggerate possible cyclical variations in moods and behaviors.The authors are grateful to Dawn Christie Burns and Ross Hodges for their help in data reduction.     

Content-specific activational effects of estrogen on working memory performance

The authors explored the influence of task content and the menstrual cycle phase on working memory (WM) performance. They addressed the content specificity of WM in the framework of evolutionary psychology, proposing a hormone-mediated adaptive design governing face perception. The authors tested 2 groups of healthy young women (n = 66 women with regular menstrual cycle, n = 27 oral contraceptive users) on a WM task with adult male or infant face photographs. Analyses of variance showed significant interaction between task content and estrogen level. Women were more efficient in solving the male faces task during high-estrogen phase of the cycle than during low-estrogen phase. No differences were found in the efficacy of solving the infant faces task between different phases of the cycle. Results suggest content-specific activational effects of estrogen on the WM performance and are consistent with the notion of a hormonal mechanism underlying adaptive shifts in cognition related to mating motivation.     

Evidence for menstrual cycle shifts in women's preferences for masculinity

Over the last decade, a growing literature has shown that women in the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle demonstrate stronger preferences for men with masculine traits than they do when in the non-fertile phases of the cycle (see Gangestad and Thornhill, 2008 and Jones et al., 2008 for recent reviews). In a recent article, Harris (in press; Sex Roles) failed to replicate this increase in women's preferences for masculine faces when women are near ovulation. Harris represented her study as one of only three studies on the topic, and as the largest of the existing studies. There are, however, many more studies on menstrual cycle shifts in preferences for facial masculinity in the published literature, including one that is 2.5 times larger in size than the Harris study. In this article, we review the evidence for cyclic shifts in mate preferences and related behaviors and discuss weaknesses of Harris's methods. Considered as a whole, the evidence for menstrual cycle shifts in women's preferences and behaviors is compelling, despite the failure of replication reported by Harris.     

Premenstrual symptoms: the role of irrational thinking.

104 women, between the ages of 18 and 45 years, were surveyed to investigate the relationship between premenstrual symptomatology, as measured by the Modified Menstrual Distress Questionnaire, and irrational thinking, as measured by the General Attitude and Belief Scale. The women who reported greater premenstrual symptomatology also reported significantly higher scores in the "need for comfort" irrationality subscale. This indicated that these women had particular difficulty dealing with hassles and the resulting feelings of tension and irritability in the premenstruum. It was suggested that the absence of significant effects for other rationality-irrationality subscales could be associated with testing at different times during the menstrual cycle. Irrationality, like other conditions (such as anxiety and depression) prevalent in the premenstruum, could change in intensity across phases of the menstrual cycle.     

The McCollough effect across the menstrual cycle

The McCollough effect (ME) has been shown to be sensitive to cholinergic agents, being strengthened by hyoscine (antagonist) and weakened by physostigmine (agonist), and possibly to more generalized changes in CNS arousal. We therefore expected the ME to be sensitive to hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle, being strongest in the postovulatory phases when arousal is low. In two experiments we found a highly significant effect of menstrual phase for the normally cycling women, but not for oral contraceptive users: ME strength gradually increased across the cycle, reaching a premenstrual peak. These findings may be explained in terms of hormonally mediated changes in arousal across the menstrual cycle.     

Shifts in Methodology and Theory in Menstrual Cycle Research on Attraction

This paper critically examines the hypothesis that different phases of the menstrual cycle induce changes in women’s mate preferences. Empirically, we show that literature on this topic may be particularly prone to experimenter degrees of freedom, in which experimenters increase their likelihood of finding significant effects through elasticity in methodological and analytical strategies (e.g., flexibility in calculation of fertile and nonfertile phases, exclusion criteria, moderators, and analysis of dependent variables). Theoretically, we address misconceptions presented by Gildersleeve and colleagues (2013a). We reveal inconsistencies in the theoretical foundation for this work and discuss tension between theory and data. In short, there is sound reason to question whether reported menstrual cycle effects in women’s mate preferences are indeed real.     

Changes in women’s interpersonal styles across the menstrual cycle

Past research suggests that women alter their behaviors during periods of high fertility to attract mates. Consistent with this notion, the current research examined the interpersonal style, as defined by the interpersonal circumplex, men tend to find most attractive in potential mates and the change in women’s interpersonal styles across the menstrual cycle. In Study 1, a sample of 101 single men reported the interpersonal style they found most attractive in a potential mate. In Study 2, a sample of 86 women reported their interpersonal styles during each day of their menstrual cycle. Results indicated that men tended to prefer mates who were interpersonally warm and that women tended to become more interpersonally warm during periods of high fertility.