Puberty suppression and executive functioning: An fMRI-study in adolescents with gender dysphoria

Summary Adolescents with gender dysphoria (GD) may be treated with gonadotropin releasing hormone analogs (GnRHa) to suppress puberty and, thus, the development of (unwanted) secondary sex characteristics. Since adolescence marks an important period for the development of executive functioning (EF), we determined whether the performance on the Tower of London task (ToL), a commonly used EF task, was altered in adolescents with GD when treated with GnRHa. Furthermore, since GD has been proposed to result from an atypical sexual differentiation of the brain, we determined whether untreated adolescents with GD showed sex-atypical brain activations during ToL performance. We found no significant effect of GnRHa on ToL performance scores (reaction times and accuracy) when comparing GnRHa treated male-to-females (suppressed MFs, n  = 8) with untreated MFs ( n  = 10) or when comparing GnRHa treated female-to-males (suppressed FMs, n  = 12) with untreated FMs ( n  = 10). However, the suppressed MFs had significantly lower accuracy scores than the control groups and the untreated FMs. Region-of-interest (ROI) analyses showed significantly greater activation in control boys ( n  = 21) than control girls ( n  = 24) during high task load ToL items in the bilateral precuneus and a trend ( p