Does the use of hormonal contraceptives affect the mental rotation performance?
Abstract
Oral contraceptive pill (OC) is one of the most popular form of contraception. Despite both behavioral and neuroimaging evidence of its significant impact on female brain and cognitive functions, much remains to be discovered regarding OCs targets in the brain and mechanisms of action. In the present study mental rotation performance was compared between women using anti-androgenic oral contraceptives (n = 35), naturally cycling (NC) women (n = 33) and men (n = 29). On average, OC users were less accurate than NC women and men. Men performed the task more accurately than NC women, but the difference reached significance only in the highest angular disparity condition (150 deg). The response time was positively related with progesterone level while accuracy was negatively related with 17ß-estradiol level, in NC, but not OC women. The comparison of slope and intercept values (parameters relating response time to angular disparity) revealed the main result of present study: OC users exhibited significantly lower slope compared to men and NC women, but there were no differences in intercept between groups. These results suggest that OC users instead of using rotation in mind strategy implemented some alternative method(s). We conclude that lower performance accuracy of OC users could be related to a less efficient performance strategy.
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Women using oral contraceptives perform worse on spatial tasks than other women and men.
“with women using oral contraceptives performing worse on spatial tasks than other women and men (Griksiene et al., 2018).”
From Factors Related to Mean Score Group Differences on Cognitive Ability Tests: A Systematic Review (2025) · cites this paper as Griksiene et al., 2018
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“Although some previous studies demonstrated differences between OC users and naturally cycling (NC) women (Griksiene and Ruksenas, 2011; Wharton et al., 2008), others found no such differences (Islam et al., 2008; Rosenberg and Park, 2002).”
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“On the other hand, results of some studies denied contribution of sex steroids to sex differences in mental rotation e.g. (Gordon and Lee, 1993; Puts et al., 2010).”
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“…several reports of improved or diminished MRT performance among OC users depending on certain OC characteristics, namely progestin androgenicity (Griksiene et al., 2018; Wharton et al., 2008), estrogenic biopotency (Beltz et al., 2015; Hampson et al., 2022), or bioavailable ethinyl estradiol…”
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“The mental rotation scores of naturally cycling women increase during periods of low estrogen concentration (314), correlating negatively with salivary estradiol levels (105).”
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“Past research on COCs is limited and has emphasized mental rotation (e.g., Beltz et al., 2015; Griksiene et al., 2018) to the exclusion of other relevant visuospatial processes.”
Noachtar, I., & Pletzer, B. (2025) · Hormones and Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.yhbeh.2025.105790 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“…task (Wharton et al., 2008) compared to anti-androgenic COC-users (Gurvich et al., 2020; Wharton et al., 2008) or non-users (Bianchini et al., 2018; Wharton et al., 2008), while anti-androgenic COC-users displayed lower mental rotation accuracy compared to non-users (Griksiene et al., 2018).”
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“In previous studies, non-COC users outperformed anti-androgenic COC users (Wharton et al ., 2008; Griksiene et al ., 2018).”
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- Authors
- Griksiene, R., Monciunskaite, R., Arnatkeviciute, A., & Ruksenas, O.
- Venue
- Hormones and Behavior
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2018-04
- Volume
- 100
- Pages
- 29-38
- ISSN
- 0018-506X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2793117963
- Cited by
- 50
- References
- 85
- Citations by year
- 2025: 9 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 1.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Hormones and Behavior (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Automotive Engineering › Spatial Cognition and Navigation
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Reproductive Health and Contraception
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Sexual Differentiation and Disorders
- Keywords
- oral contraceptives, mental rotation, spatial cognition, sex differences, progesterone, estradiol, reaction time (psychology), angular disparity, cognitive strategies, women
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain, Cognition, Contraceptives, Oral, Combined, Contraceptives, Oral, Hormonal, Estradiol, Female, Humans, Male, Menstrual Cycle, Progesterone, Rotation, Case-Control Studies, Young Adult, Spatial Processing
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