With menopause, many women complain of having a worse memory, of not being able to remember a word at a certain moment or of not knowing why they were going to a place. Yes, what happens when you enter a room in the house and say the famous phrase “but why did I come here?”
Studies still do not agree very much on whether or not menopause decreases our memory capacity, but what is proven is that a high percentage of postmenopausal women complain of these failures.
To try to help all these women, hormone therapy has been tried, which consists of applying doses of testosterone to women who wish to do so. A recent study published in the scientific journal Menopause (2014) wanted to investigate the effects of this therapy on cognitive performance in a group of postmenopausal women.
In this research, Susan Davis and a team of collaborators involved nine women aged around 55 years who were treated with transdermal testosterone for 26 weeks. Before and after treatment, the participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing two mental tasks: one of verbal fluency (saying words) and the other of mental rotation.
The data showed that although there were no changes in the speed or precision with which the cognitive tasks were performed, there were some modifications in the way these women’s brains responded. Apparently, a lower BOLD response (lower oxygen consumption) was observed in the parietal and frontal areas for the fluency and rotation tasks, respectively.
According to the authors, it could be determined that testosterone therapy would preserve cognitive function in postmenopausal women through the need for fewer neural resources in its execution.
There are still many unresolved issues. Among them, we think of the possibility of promoting an improvement in memory and other mental functions through cognitive stimulation therapy beyond the benefits found in hormonal supplements.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
