Objective: To assess the effect of the menstrual cycle and neuroticism on fearful and happy faces recogni-tion. Methods: High and low neuroticism females were asked to recognize fearful and happy faces with different intensity during early follicular phase, late follicular phase and the luteal phase, with the ovarian hormones tested meanwhile. Re-sults: More accuracy and faster responses for male and happy faces were found. The interaction between emotion and gen-der of faces showed only for female faces, better accuracy were found in happiness recognition than in fear recognition. More importantly, estrogen and progesterone levels were both negatively correlated with perception of male happy faces, and prolactin was also negatively correlatd with happy faces. Furthermore, significant correlations between reaction time for all faces and testosterone were found. Conclusion: The results suggest emotion face recognition performances are associated with ovarian hormones, especially estrogen, progesterone, testosterone and prolactin, which may be the potential endocrine mechanism to affect face expression recognition.

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