Scientists have long known that women’s brains undergo substantial remodeling during puberty and pregnancy. These moments of hormonal upheaval are linked to a rewiring of neural networks and reductions in the volume of the brain’s outer, wrinkly layer—called cortical gray matter—which plays a role in memory, reasoning and movement. But far less is known about what happens to the brain in another major hormonal shift: menopause.
Now, a new study published in Nature Communications sheds some light on how the brain changes in menopause. Unlike during puberty and pregnancy, the menopausal transition—the moment the body is going through menopause—doesn’t appear linked to an overall decrease in cortical gray matter volume. The finding suggests the female brain responds in different ways to points of hormonal flux throughout the lifespan.
“No one had looked at the changes in the whole brain matter in this menopause transition before,” said Sophie van ’t Hof, a Ph.D. student at the Amsterdam University Medical Center in the Netherlands, at a press conference discussing the results. Van ’t Hof is the first author on the new study.
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Gray matter declines as we age, no matter a person’s biological sex. But by comparing the brains of individuals who were transitioning through menopause with those of women who were premenopausal and postmenopausal, the researchers found little change in gray matter volume during menopause. The results show that sex hormone levels affect the brain in different ways at different times during the lifespan.
“This is really fundamental research, and it’s really understanding the basic brain mechanisms of the female brain. It’s long been overlooked,” said van ’t Hof.
The study has some limitations, the authors write. For one, the individuals in the study self-reported their stage of menopause, which the researchers didn’t confirm with hormone or other diagnostic tests. It also doesn’t entirely jibe with previous research finding distinct reductions in gray matter volume in the hippocampus during the menopausal transition.
Van ’t Hof said that it is too soon to say whether any specific structural brain changes or effects are linked to cognitive function in menopause. The results beg for further research, she said.
“The exact implications are very difficult at this stage,” she said.