Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Midlife is an important stage of adulthood when changes in memory and brain structure can start to appear. For women, this time often overlaps with the menopause transition, a natural biological process marked by hormonal changes that can affect the brain. Menopause has been linked to changes in estrogen, a hormone that helps support brain regions important for memory, like the hippocampus. However, it is still not well understood how menopause, aging, and sex together influence memory and brain structures. In our study, we looked at 118 middle-aged adults between the ages of 39.5 and 65.5 who were healthy and had no cognitive impairments. Participants completed a memory task that tested how well they could remember where they saw faces on a screen, while brain scans were used to measure the size of different parts of the hippocampus, an area that helps us remember events and details. We found that postmenopausal women showed the strongest signs of age-related decline in both memory and hippocampal volume, particularly in specific subregions called CA1 and subiculum. We also found that larger volume in all subregions were related to worse memory performance. These relationships were not seen in men or in premenopausal women. Our findings suggest that menopause may be a turning point for women's brain health. Understanding how menopause affects memory and brain structure could help identify early markers of Alzheimer's disease and guide future strategies to protect brain health in women.