Paper Title

Effects of prenatal exposure to diethylstilbestrol (DES) on hemispheric laterality and spatial ability in human males

Authors

Profile picture of Stephanie A. Sanders
Stephanie A. Sanders
Profile picture of June Machover Reinisch
June Machover Reinisch

Keywords

  • Diethylstilbestrol (DES)
  • prenatal exposure
  • hemispheric laterality
  • spatial ability
  • brain specialization
  • cognitive abilities
  • synthetic estrogen
  • nonlinguistic processing
  • brain laterality
  • sexual differentiation
  • human brain
  • hormone exposure
  • cognitive impairment
  • spatial cognitive ability
  • gender differences

Journal

Hormones and Behavior External link

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DOI

DOI Icon 10.1016/0018-506X(92)90032-Q

Publication Info

Volume: 26 | Issue: 1 | Pages: 62-75

Published On

March, 1992

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Abstract

Ten males exposed to diethylstilbestrol (DES), a nonsteroidal synthetic estrogen, during gestation were compared to their matched, unexposed brothers on measures of brain hemispheric specialization for processing nonlinguistic spatial information and cognitive abilities. DES exposure was associated with reduced hemispheric laterality and lowered spatial ability. These data provide direct evidence of a relationship between brain laterality, spatial cognitive ability, and prenatal exposure to hormones in human males. Further, the implications of these findings for understanding sexual differentiation of the human brain are discussed.

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