Researchers followed 120 women who reported moving from before to after menopause between two MRI scans. They measured changes in grey matter, brain tissue rich in nerve-cell bodies, examining both its total volume and volumes in different parts of the brain. Nature Communications (source, opens in new tab)
Nature CommunicationsPuberty, pregnancy, and menopause show shared and distinct structural changes across the lifespanOpen source (opens in new tab)
The answer depended on which measurement they examined. Volume declined in deeper brain regions beneath the cortex, the brain’s outer layer. But the researchers did not find a statistically significant reduction in total grey matter or in the cortex itself. That does not prove those volumes stayed unchanged; it means the evidence was not strong enough to establish a reduction in those measurements. A decline in particular regions can therefore sit alongside an inconclusive result for the total.
The study also compared these women with women who remained before menopause and women who remained after it between scans. Overall rates of volume change did not differ significantly among the three groups. The findings therefore establish neither that the menopause transition speeds up brain-volume loss nor that it slows it down.
These were measurements of brain structure. The analysis did not assess memory, thinking ability, brain-fog symptoms or dementia risk, so it cannot tell us how the observed changes relate to those experiences or outcomes.
Published in Nature Communications, the menopause analysis included 843 women from UK Biobank, a large health research resource. Between scans, 120 moved from self-reported pre- to post-menopause, 49 remained pre-menopausal and 674 remained post-menopausal. The wider study included 1,095 participants across puberty, pregnancy and menopause groups.
Having two scans per person allowed researchers to follow changes within individuals. Women who remained before or after menopause showed statistically significant reductions in total and cortical grey-matter volume. Women crossing the transition did not, after a statistical adjustment intended to limit chance findings when making multiple comparisons.
That contrast might suggest that women crossing menopause lost less volume. But the researchers tested that possibility by directly comparing the groups’ rates of change and found no statistically significant difference. The separate results within each group were not enough to establish that one group changed faster than another. Meanwhile, volume in deeper brain regions declined in all three groups.
The researchers also checked whether including women who had used hormone therapy influenced the findings. Removing those participants did not change the results. This check cannot tell us whether hormone therapy benefits or harms the brain.
The timing of the transition remained imprecise. Menopause status was self-reported, and the data could not distinguish perimenopause—the transitional phase leading up to menopause—from premenopause. The group crossing the transition was also much smaller than the group that remained post-menopausal. These limits constrain how precisely the study can describe brain-volume changes through the transition; the authors consider their interpretation preliminary.
- Nature Communications · Peer-reviewed studyPuberty, pregnancy, and menopause show shared and distinct structural changes across the lifespanpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov · opens in new tab
