Oral contraceptive androgenicity affects symmetry processing speed in a visuospatial working memory task.

Every day millions of women worldwide take oral contraceptives (OCs). Findings of their impact on cognition are inconclusive. It is suggested that OC generation may act as a potential modulating factor driving the inconsistencies among existing studies. The current study investigated whether the androgenic activity of monophasic OCs affects working memory (WM). We compared women using androgenic second generation OCs (OC 2) and anti-androgenic fourth generation OCs (OC 4) in addition to naturally cycling women (NC). Participants performed a visuospatial and verbal WM task. In the visuospatial WM task, participants decided whether an abstract pattern was symmetrical or not, while simultaneously maintaining a sequence of spatial positions of a square appearing in a matrix. In the verbal WM task, participants solved simple arithmetic equations while simultaneously maintaining a sequence of letters. Our results showed that NC women and OC users (OC 2+4) did not differ on central measures in either WM task. However, when the OC generation was considered, OC 2 users were significantly faster in the symmetry decision subtask of the visuospatial WM task compared to OC 4 and NC women. This effect was thereby independent of the ethinylestradiol level in OC users. No differences between groups were found in the various measures of the verbal WM task. Our findings add further evidence that OCs androgenicity impacts selective visuospatial processes. • the impact of oral contraceptives' (OC) androgenicity on working memory (WM) was tested. • androgenic OC 2 users, antiandrogenic OC 4 user, and naturally cycling women were compared. • women performed a visuospatial and verbal WM task. • symmetry processing speed was selectively increased in OC 2 users. • our findings indicate that OC generation affects isolated visuospatial abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]