Carole Hooven, Ph.D.

not happening in the female.

This is a huge difference.

And the reason it matters is because testosterone as a steroid is then going around and acting as a transcription factor when it binds with this receptor to alter gene transcription on thousands of genes.

So that is happening in males and not in females.

I think around eight weeks, it begins peaking around 15 to 20 weeks.

And then, of course, after birth... It goes back down.

Well, it goes down at birth, but then it goes up, peaking at three months after birth.

And that's called mini-puberty.

I don't even remember that.

Because it's new.

You probably didn't learn about it in medical school.

Now it's getting a lot of attention.

It's not exactly as high, but it's very high.

Maybe 400, if I remember correctly.

But it's very high.

And the point is that this is affecting the development of the brain.

So I'm really interested in behavior.

And from an evolutionary point of view, what is going on in this environment

early environment is extremely important.

The body is realizing, the male body is realizing that it's going to be a sperm producing animal.