Introducing the brain: changes in menstruation (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, October 16, 2023, 16:29 (194 days ago) @ David Turell

A study of thirty women:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGtxddjkJhHNtMMRrVwJMZkhgbX

"...the researchers behind the preprint recruited 30 young, healthy people who menstruate and imaged their brains over the course of their menstrual cycle, making sure to get images when they were ovulating, during menses, and in between, as the uterine lining thickens before a person’s period. They also measured the participants’ hormone levels at the time of the scans, so they could correlate brain analyses with hormone levels.

"Both white and gray matter changed notably over the menstrual cycle, in sync with hormone levels, they report. Overall, the hormones 17β-estradiol and luteinizing hormone, which surge just before ovulation, coincided with structural changes that suggest faster information transfer. Meanwhile, levels of follicle stimulating hormone, which peaks in between menstruation and ovulation, were generally tied to an increase in gray matter thickness. However, different parts of the brain responded differently to fluctuating hormones. For instance, in some parts of the brain, rising levels of progesterone led to thicker gray matter—but in others, the exact opposite occurred.

"According to the authors, the paper is the first to examine changes across the whole brain in both white and grey matter and connect them to menstrual cycle–related hormone levels. “Although we do not currently report functional consequences or correlates of structural brain changes, our findings may have implications for hormone-driven alterations in behavior and cognition,” the team writes.

"More importantly, though, the findings help establish baseline information about how hormones impact the brain on a regular basis. After all, a person may undergo some 450 menstrual cycles in their lifetime, the team notes. “Investigation of brain-hormone relationships across networks is necessary to understand human nervous system functioning on a daily basis, during hormone transition periods, and across the human lifespan,” they assert."

Comment: These findings are what one would expect, bodily accommodations for a possible pregnancy run by the brain. From a teleological view the necessity for design is obvious,