Birth control pills and its effects on women's memory

Shawn Nielsen, a graduate student in neurology and behavioral biology at the University of California, Irvine, USA, conducted a study involving 66 female students, half of whom were given medication. Tablet birth control is taken daily and the other half is not taken.

>>>Contraceptives change women's brains

The results of this study were published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

Girls who attend this experiment will be given a memory test. Some girls were randomly selected to watch an emotional film about a boy hit by a car while walking with his mother and then the boy was rushed to the hospital, where The doctors reinstalled the boy's severed feet. Other female students were told the less dramatic story: a mother and son witnessed a minor accident, on the way to the hospital.

Nielsen is trying to achieve her doctorate in the laboratory of Larry Cahill (a famous hormone researcher), who is interested in the difference in the levels of hormones estrogen and hormone progesterone that may affect memory Previous studies have suggested that estrogen hormones may help boost memory when speaking, in another study, for example, women who use birth control pills as a daily pill find that they remember the vocabulary Better on the days of taking birth control pills compared to the days when they did not take the pill or did not have a hormone replacement.

In this study, after the girls were allowed to watch the film, they were tested for emotion-related memory, a week later on what they saw: those taking birth control pills could recall the The general theme of the film is better than its specific details. This is similar to the way men remember emotional events, Nielsen said.

"If we reduce the level of female sex hormone supply, the change in the types of information that these female students (those who take birth control pills) remember is like what a man can remember, " Nielsen said. Birth control pills work by flattening the natural spines in hormones estrogen and hormone progesterone and that's what causes ovulation and signals the body not to replenish hormones, keeping the hormone levels low throughout the cycle. period

The opposite result for female students who do not use this birth control pill: they can better remember the details, such as: the color the boy wore on, the mother wearing glasses, or whether that there is a fire hydrant at the intersection. Female students who do not use birth control pills may not recall the general themes of the film as details they can remember.

This does not mean that birth control pills stop memory or rob a woman of her ability to recall outstanding things. It is just a matter of what kind of information they remember. Contraceptives work to keep the hormone levels stable throughout the cycle, and the female students who carry it tend to have different reactions with sensory experiences, compared to women who experience fluctuations. monthly course and hormone flow. And this is important because many mental illnesses affect women such as anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder - as extreme emotional expressions that take place in a way nature.

"The important thing in these findings is: sex hormones affect the types of information that help recall an emotional event , " Nielsen said. "The results of this study confirm that: these changes are a powerful tool for future studies of basic neurobiological investigations of these types of disorders."

"Simply taking drugs and the level of natural sex hormone suppression can affect specific types of information that you can remember from a prominent event. That says the role of hormones estrogen and The hormone progesterone in memory, they affect the way a woman remembers an emotional event in her life, " Nielsen said.

A better understanding of this connection can lead to more effective treatments aimed at targets such as hormonal drivers. Nielsen tried to find out exactly what level of hormones is associated with changes in recollection.

Currently, Nielsen prepares to launch additional studies on the correlation between the level of fluctuations of hormones estrogen and natural progesterone in women taking birth control pills with changes in the types of information that these women recall from emotional events.