In this project we administer hormones to test their causal effect on emotion regulation. We conducted studies using fMRI and EEG in healthy participants while investigating approach-avoidance tendencies, gaze aversion, risky and intertemporal decision making etc. Early observations indicated that testosterone administration (vs placebo) can bias the amygdala towards threat-approach (Radke et al., 2015 Science Advance – Pict left). Testosterone administration (vs placebo) in patients with social anxiety disorder can alleviates threat avoidance (Enter et al., 2016). We recently translated these findings to clinical practice and showed that particularly high avoidant patients, benefit from testosterone-enhanced exposure therapy (Hudschemaerkers et al., 2025 – Pict right). We will now continue with studies examining the role of testosterone in relation to aggression.
Selected publications:
Hutschemaekers MHM, de Kleine RA, Kampman M, Smits JAJ, Roelofs K. (2023). Social avoidance and testosterone enhanced exposure efficacy in women with social anxiety disorder: A pilot investigation. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 158:106372. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2023.106372.
Schäfer, L., Ikink, I., Woyke, I.C., Heuvelmans, V.R., Roelofs, K. & Figner, B. (2022). No evidence for a causal effect of exogenous testosterone on risky decision-making in women: An experiment and meta-analysis. Decision, 9 (4), 347-365. doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/dec0000192
Hutschemaekers MHM, de Kleine RA, Hendriks GJ, Kampman M, Roelofs K. The enhancing effects of testosterone in exposure treatment for social anxiety disorder: a randomized proof-of-concept trial. Transl Psychiatry. 2021 Aug 20;11(1):432. doi: 10.1038/s41398-021-01556-8. PMID: 34417443.
Peer JM, Enter D, Spinhoven Ph, Roelofs K. (2017). Exogenous Testosterone Affects Early Threat Processing in Socially Anxious and Healthy Women. Biological Psychology, 129:82-89. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.08.003.
Enter D, Spinhoven P, Roelofs K. (2016). Dare to approach: single dose testosterone administration promotes threat approach in social anxiety disorder. Clinical Psychological Science, 1-7. DOI: 10.1177/2167702616631499
Radke S, Volman I, Mehta P, van Son V, Enter D, Sanfey A, Toni I, de Bruijn E, Roelofs K. (2015) Testosterone biases the amygdala towards social threat approach. Science Advances, 1:e1400074