Organizational & Activational Effects
In females rodents, levels of gonadal steroids are relatively low (but not absent) during early development and they do not increase significantly until puberty.
In females, as is true in males, gonadal steroids act to regulate the frequency and timing of aggressive responses:
- progesterone acts to inhibit aggressive behavior--important for display of sex behavior-->increase in mean aggressive acts are observed when progesterone levels are the lowest
- prolonged exposure to estrogen and progesterone followed by estrogen alone facilitates the display of maternal aggression (illustrated in Chapter 8)
- estrogen (and possibly testosterone) act to maintain “normal” levels of aggressive behavior (species differences)
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