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Study Finds Menopause Temporarily Alters Brain's Normal Aging
Developing
In Short: A 10-year study published in Nature Communications suggests that menopause may temporarily alter the brain's normal aging process, halting the gradual loss of cortical volume and gray matter.
Researchers found that when menopause begins, the decline in sex steroid hormones, such as estrogen and progesterone, coincides with a halt in the natural losses of gray matter and total cortical volume.
Participants self-reported their stage of menopause, and hormone levels were not measured directly, which could affect the study's conclusions.
The study's findings challenge previous research, such as a 2018 study that found gray matter loss to the hippocampus accelerates during the transition to menopause.
Dr. van 't Hof, a researcher involved in the study, noted, "Menopause, in other words, is defined not by what changes, but by what does not." During puberty and pregnancy, the female body experiences profound hormonal changes, and there is an especially steep rise in estrogens and progesterone, which can bind to receptors in the brain.
The study's results suggest that the brain's normal aging process is temporarily altered when menopause begins, but the exact mechanisms behind this phenomenon remain unclear.
People whose depression followed a more favorable course showed relatively stable brain structure, indicating that the brain's response to depression can vary over time.
The cells carry different chromatin configurations, the packaging that determines which genes a cell can access, potentially opening new avenues for studying devastating diseases that affect the hindbrain, such as spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
What this adds
The study adds to the understanding of how menopause affects brain aging, but hormone levels were not measured directly, which could impact the study's conclusions.
The research also highlights the variability in how depression affects brain structure over time, suggesting that the brain's response to depression can be more nuanced than previously thought.
Background
El Niño's influence extends beyond the Pacific, with the phenomenon causing surface temperatures to rise in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean, releasing heat stored in the oceans into the atmosphere more gradually, contributing to higher global temperatures in the following year.
A new study from the Center for American Progress highlights the widespread impact of violence on health and economic conditions in the United States, underscoring the need for comprehensive policy solutions.
What's still developing
- A 10-year study suggests that what matters may not be whether someone has depression, but how the illness unfolds over time.
- Depression may influence the brain, but this study suggests that the ending is not written at diagnosis.
- The study was published in JAMA Network Open.
- Most brain-imaging studies of depression are more like photographs.
- The study is published in Nature Communications.
- In the study, Dr. Loh and co-authors found that the forebrain and midbrain, which govern language, reasoning and consciousness, come from a different progenitor cell than the hindbrain.
- “Previous attempts to make hindbrain neurons likely tried to coax forebrain and midbrain progenitors into hindbrain cells, which our study shows is not possible,” said Stanford University graduate student Rayyan Jokhai.
- “Our discovery means that we can now grow neurons from the back of the brain, the hindbrain, in a petri dish and study their functions.” The scientists also successfully coaxed human pluripotent stem cells to become functional hindbrain motor neurons in the lab.