Pubertal hormones, the adolescent brain, and the maturation of social behaviors: Lessons from the Syrian hamster

Conventional wisdom holds that gonadal steroid hormones organize and sexually differentiate neural circuits perinatally, and at puberty they activate these circuits to facilitate expression of social behaviors. Using the Syrian hamster to study the role of pubertal hormones in behavioral maturation, we have found that pubertal hormones also organize the adolescent brain. Initial studies revealed that male reproductive behavior cannot be activated by gonadal steroids prepubertally, indicating that the brain acquires behavioral responsiveness during adolescence. Subsequent experiments demonstrated that the presence of gonadal hormones during adolescence masculinize and defeminize behavioral responses of males to hormones in adulthood. Preliminary data also suggest that ovarian hormones defeminize but do not masculinize behavioral responses of females to hormones in adulthood. Furthermore, pubertal hormones program the adult expression of agonistic behaviors that are both steroid-dependent and steroid-independent in adulthood. Thus, the interaction between pubertal hormones and the adolescent brain is key for the maturation of adult social behaviors, and perturbations in the timing of this interaction have long-lasting consequences on adult behavior.