No difference in the omitted stimulus reaction time task during the menstrual cycle : A multisensory study.

ABSTRACT

Pharmacological studies are currently performed in men and not in women due to the absence of methodological or conceptual information concerning the effects of the menstrual cycle. This is the first study in which three different sensory stimuli were applied to females in an omitted stimulus reaction time (OSRT) task during three phases of the menstrual cycle. Eleven college volunteers with regular menstrual cycles responded to lateralized trains of visual, auditory, and somatosensory stimuli. A participant’s OSRT was recorded for each trial performed during the menstrual (day 2-3), follicular (day 7-8), and luteal (day 21-22) phases. The results showed that the ovarian cycle has no effects on the OSRT task in any of the sensory modalities, but the reaction to the missing auditory stimuli was found to be systematically faster than the reactions to the visual and somatosensory stimuli (P<0.002). Thus the OSRT is affected by sensory modality but not by the normal menstrual cycle.