Estrogen and Memory in Women

So...the AHFMR hosts weekly seminars in a classroom nearby to my office, so under the influence of my innate nerdy draw to learn random facts, I started attending these seminars regularly (dang. I so could go attend lectures that I'd never see in Waterloo...but I seem to fall asleep in lectures anyway, so...=P).

Anyways...the speaker (Barbara Sherwin of McGill) today was talking about...ahem. "Estrogen and memory in women". I braced myself for a talk about female intelligence and how guys are stupid (a well-established fact, among the circles I run in), but it wasn't like that. =P

The speaker was looking at the effects of estrogen, in women who lacks estrogen production (so postmenopausal women, either natural or surgical) and the impact. Estrogen is known to encourage neuronal dendritic development, with high number of dendritic spines seen at high estrogen levels of the cycle...also seems to help in protecting neurosystems somehow. Overhead MR scans shows increases in frontal lobe activities when comparing a woman receiving estrogen supplements against one that did not, in postmenopausal state.

Further investigation shows that estrogen helps delay the onset of conditions like dementia and especially in working and short-term memory. They conducted trials on women who had surgical-induced menopause (so healthy people, just lack estrogen and...whatever else it is that those female organs...do -_-), and have seen that even short term estrogen (CEE, I believe. Supposely there are different isotypes) helps to slow the degeneration of memory. There seems to be little influence on overall cognitive abilities, however.

The speaker also discussed her Critical Period Hypothesis. Tests have shown that estrogen applied right on the onset of menopause reaps the most amount of benefit of the anti-degeneration (even if it is only short term...which shows only slightly less deprovement when compared to people who has continued to take it, in a ...7? year study), as oppose to if you apply estrogen in later years. So the critical-ness of it is that it needs to be applied right after menopause.

In summary, estrogen seems to play a major role in memory capabilities. Without it, memory capabilities drop a statically large amount. It seems to influence many other aspects of female physiology as well. It has been noted that females with early menopause (average age of normal menopause: 51) due to surgery has increased chances of...alot of stuff. The only one I actually remembered is artheroscerosis. Estrogen supplements doesn't actually make you smarter, it just keeps you at your intelligence for a longer amount of time. Anyways...the speakers noted that this is just in the lab, and not really clinical stuff yet. I suppose that was warning to prevent hordes of women lining up for estrogen injections...

lol. Of all things I could've wrote about, why this particular seminar? I have no idea...sudden urge? Nice departure from my typical posts. lol