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How menopause reshapes the brain

Researchers are starting to learn how the early stages of menopause affect brain health — and what that could mean for treatment.
  1. Heidi Ledford
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Illustration of a female body silhouette with lightbulb as brain connected to two lightbulb ovaries

Illustration by María Corte

When Naomi Rance first started studying menopause and the brain, she pretty much had the field to herself. And what she was discovering surprised her. In studies of post-mortem brains, she had found neurons in a region called the hypothalamus that roughly doubled in size in women after menopause1. “This was changing so much in postmenopausal women,” says Rance, a neuropathologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “It had to be important.”

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Nature 617, 25-27 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01474-3

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