Memory Changes in Women May Occur Decades Earlier
Memory lapses are believed to occur in women at the time they enter the menopause stage. But according to the new study by Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), such mental decline could happen decades earlier than previously thought.
Their findings revealed that reproductive stage, not simply chronological age, may contribute to changes in memory and brain function.
“By shifting our focus to this midlife period, we detected early changes in memory circuitry that are evident decades before the age range traditionally targeted by cognitive neuroscience studies on aging," said lead author Emily Jacobs, a former member of the Division of Women’s Health and the Department of Psychiatry at BWH.”
The research team examined 200 men and women, using functional MRI, to look at regional and network-level changes in the brain’s memory circuitry. For the study, participants went through a task that measured their memory. The researchers then collected information on the female participants’ menopausal status and measured steroid hormone levels, including a sex steroid hormone that declines during menopause called ‘estradiol’.
The researchers found that when estradiol levels were lower, there were more pronounced changes in the hippocampus - one of the primary regions of the brain implicated in learning and memory.
They also looked at high-performing postmenopausal women and found that they exhibited brain activity patterns that resembled the activity of premenopausal women.
"Our findings underscore the incredible variability of the brain as we age and the critical importance and complexity of the impact of sex on aging, including the unique role of sex steroid hormones in memory function," said senior author Jill Goldstein. "Maintaining intact memory function with age is one of the greatest public health challenges of our time, and applying a sex-dependent lens to the study of memory circuitry aging will help identify early antecedents of future memory decline and risk for Alzheimer’s disease."
The new findings were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Source of this article:
Journal of Neuroscience
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