Lab study, 2013
Does how your brain processes emotional words change during your menstrual cycle?
Yes, during menstruation, your brain shows a specific pattern when processing emotional words. This pattern is not seen in other cycle phases and differs from patterns in men and women using birth control.
What they did
12 women were tested at different phases of their menstrual cycle. While their brain activity was recorded using many sensors on the scalp (high-density EEG), they did a task where they decided whether letter strings were real words or not. Some words had emotional meanings while others were neutral. Researchers looked at the brain's electrical activity patterns just before the words appeared.
What they found
During menstruation, there was a specific brain activity pattern that appeared just before women saw emotional words. This pattern meant their brain's left and right sides were specialized for handling emotional information. This pattern was not seen during other phases of the menstrual cycle. The pattern differed from patterns seen in men and in women taking birth control.
What it means for you
Hormonal changes during menstruation may affect how your brain handles emotional information. The specific brain pattern during menstruation suggests the brain may focus more on emotional words at that time. A major limitation is that only 12 women were studied, which is a very small group.
12
right-handed healthy women
About the study
- Original title
- Hemispheric specialization varies with EEG brain resting states and phase of menstrual cycle
- Authors
- Cacioppo S, Bianchi-Demicheli F, Bischof P et al.
- Journal
- PloS one
- Year
- 2013
- Study design
- Lab study
- What was tested
- EEG brain activity recording during different cycle phases
- Open access
- Yes
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0063196
Original abstract
A growing body of behavioral studies has demonstrated that women's hemispheric specialization varies as a function of their menstrual cycle, with hemispheric specialization enhanced during their menstruation period. Our recent high-density electroencephalogram (EEG) study with lateralized emotional versus neutral words extended these behavioral results by showing that hemispheric specialization in men, but not in women under birth-control, depends upon specific EEG resting brain states at stimulus arrival, suggesting that hemispheric specialization may be pre-determined at the moment of the stimulus onset. To investigate whether EEG brain resting state for hemispheric specialization could vary as a function of the menstrual phase, we tested 12 right-handed healthy women over different phases of their menstrual cycle combining high-density EEG recordings and the same lateralized lexical decision paradigm with emotional versus neutral words. Results showed the presence of specific EEG resting brain states, associated with hemispheric specialization for emotional words, at the moment of the stimulus onset during the menstruation period only. These results suggest that the pre-stimulus EEG pattern influencing hemispheric specialization is modulated by the hormonal state.
Reproduced under CC-BY.