2005/12/01 by Joseph R. Bussiere, Tomasz M. Beer, Michelle B. Neiss +1
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Androgen #Androgen deprivation therapy #Cancer #Cognition #Cognitive psychology #Developmental psychology #Estrogen and related hormone effects #Forgetting #Hippocampus #Internal medicine #Medicine #Memoria #Memory and Neural Mechanisms #Memory consolidation #Neuroscience #Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology Research #Prostate cancer #Psychology
paper · doi:10.1037/0735-7044.119.6.1429
openalex publication_date 2005/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Androgen deprivation leads to a profound loss of synaptic density in the hippocampus and changes in learning and memory in animal models. The authors examined group differences in verbal memory between men on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), a commonly used treatment for prostate cancer, and healthy men. The authors found that men on ADT have a specific impairment of retention but normal encoding and retrieval processes on a word list-learning task. Speed and accuracy for both perceptual and semantic encoding, as well as retrieval at a very short retention interval, were not affected; however, recognition fell to chance after a 2-min retention interval in men on ADT. Healthy men showed only moderate forgetting, and performance was still above chance at 12 min. This pattern of preserved encoding and retrieval but impaired retention suggests that androgens play a role in hippocampally mediated memory processes, possibly having a specific affect on consolidation.