Emotion processing is known to interact with memory. Ovarian steroid hormones, such as progesterone and estradiol, modulate emotion processing and memory. However, it is unclear how these hormones influence brain activity when emotion processing is integrated with working memory (WM). Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the relationship between endogenous hormonal concentration and brain activity during emotion processing in the context of a WM n-back task in 74 young women using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Results show that positive emotion processing activates reward-related areas, such as the caudate and putamen, whereas negative emotion processing activates a corticolimbic network, including the amygdala and hippocampus. Furthermore, our findings provide evidence that progesterone modulates more bottom-up brain activation during both positive and negative emotion processing, whereas estradiol activates lateralized, top-down regulation. These findings provide insight on the neural correlates of emotion processing during an n-back task in young women and highlight how important it is to consider women’s endogenous hormonal concentration in neurobiological and cognition research.

众所周知，情绪处理与记忆相互作用。卵巢类固醇激素，如黄体酮和雌二醇，调节情绪处理和记忆。然而，当情绪处理与工作记忆 (WM) 结合时，这些激素如何影响大脑活动尚不清楚。因此，本研究的目的是在 WM n的背景下检查情绪处理过程中内源性激素浓度与大脑活动之间的关系。使用功能性磁共振成像 (fMRI) 对 74 名年轻女性进行的 -back 任务。结果表明，积极情绪处理激活与奖赏相关的区域，如尾状核和壳核，而消极情绪处理激活皮质边缘网络，包括杏仁核和海马体。此外，我们的研究结果提供证据表明，在积极和消极情绪处理过程中，黄体酮调节更多自下而上的大脑激活，而雌二醇则激活侧化、自上而下的调节。这些发现提供了对年轻女性n- back 任务期间情绪处理的神经相关性的洞察，并强调了在神经生物学和认知研究中考虑女性内源性激素浓度的重要性。