Grant: Project Grant

Oral contraceptive pill (OCP) is a largely used contraceptive method that is often prescribed during adolescence, a time at which the brain is still developing. OCP is composed of synthetic sex hormones, which abolish the menstrual cycle and maintain very low levels of endogenous sex hormones. Various studies have shown that women using OCP perform differently on various cognitive tasks, have more difficulty to regulate their emotions, and exhibit a different pattern of stress hormone secretion relative to naturally-cycling women and men. It however remains to be determined whether these effects remain after OCP use cessation. Moreover, one aspect that has been neglected so far is to investigate the impact of timing, that is the age at which OCP use has been initiated. In fact, adolescence is a time at which brain development is important and the chronic use of synthetic hormones may influence its course of development. In this study, we will recruit healthy men and women. Women will differ based on their history of OCP use: current users, previous users, and never users. Participants will be exposed to various tasks in order to measure cognitive, emotional, hormonal, and neural outcomes. We hypothesize that OCP use will have long-lasting impact on these systems and that the effects will be more pronounced for women who have used OCP for a longer time and who have initiated its use at an earlier age. Our results will fill an important gap in the literature and will definitely provide women and clinicians with data that will guide a more informed decision about their choice of contraceptive methods.