Women’s Brain Health Micro-Briefing: October 2025 roundup

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🌏 Yes. Women’s health has been ignored for too long, but I’m an optimist and I see that tide is finally turning, with serious funding flowing in. One example is the Wellcome Leap Foundation’s CARE (Cutting Alzheimer’s Risk through Endocrinology) initiative, led by neuroscientist Lisa Mosconi. CARE is a global cooperative aiming to cut women’s lifetime risk of Alzheimer’s disease in half by 2050. Rather than chasing a single “hormone fix,” it’s focused on developing advanced brain imaging, blood biomarkers, and predictive models to detect risk early and guide personalised prevention. Melinda Gates is also championing large-scale, sex-specific health research and helping to build the scientific foundation women’s brain health deserves. Read more about ​CARE​.

🧠 Do women’s brains age faster than men’s? And does this explain why more women than men develop AD? A new mega-study suggests not … or at least, not in any simple way. Researchers analysed over 12,000 brain scans from people aged 17 to 95 and found only small, region-specific differences. The team found that men showed steeper declines in some brain regions, including parts of the cortex involved in memory, perception, and decision-making. Women, by contrast, lost volume more slowly and showed less cortical thinning as they aged. Overall, the men’s and women’s brain ageing trajectory looked remarkably similar. The takeaway? Women’s higher AD rates can’t be explained by faster brain ageing alone it’s a far more complex story of biology, biography and lifespan. Article published in ​PNAS​

🎙️ XXplored Women’s Brain Health is a new podcast with the first episode Why Sex Matters & What We’ve Ignored in Brain Ageing looking at this blind spots in neuroscience and how we got here. Host Dr Laura Stankeviciute (University of Gothenburg) is joined by Professor Liisa Galea (University of Toronto) and Dr Maria Teresa Ferretti (Karolinska Institutet) for a lively conversation about the science (and politics) of women’s brains and neuroscience research. The trio also discuss neurosexism, precision medicine, and what’s needed to close the gender data gap. ​Listen​ or watch on YouTube: ​XXplored: Why Sex Matters & What We’ve Ignored in Brain Ageing​

🤝 I started my neuroscience career studying how synapses form and change at the nerve-muscle junction in response to neural activity. A new study revisits that magic moment when neurons in the brain first connect and learn to talk to each other. Using fluorescent tags in fruit flies, researchers watched new synapses mature step by step. When they blocked neural activity, the synapses stopped forming precise connections. It’s a reminder that brain wiring depends on active communication and disruptions in this process may contribute to conditions like autism, epilepsy, and intellectual disability. This study was published in ​The Journal of Neuroscience​ with a non academic summary ​here​.

📚 Understanding the unique interplay between female sex hormones and women’s brain health is a critical step in closing this research gap. In this new article, two neuroscientists in the space call for more studies that combine high-resolution brain imaging with hormone and molecular testing to improve women’s brain health outcomes. The piece was published in ​Neuropsychopharmacology​.

🧐 Are you curious about the neuroscience of curiosity? I consider myself a naturally curious person, and as a receiver of my emails, you’re likely a curious person too. Lucky for us, people who get excited about discovery for discovery’s sake have better cognition in later life than those who are comparatively less curious. In this episode of The Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast discover how our innate sense of curiosity changes as we age, and the brain benefits of being a curious person. Listen here: ​Is curiosity the key to ageing well?​

🧐 Conversations about menopause often focus on menopause hormone therapy (MHT/HRT). But one size never fits all, and for some women, the risks of MHT outweigh the benefits, or they simply want to consider other tools. That’s where psychology is useful. In the UK’s NICE menopause guidelines, cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is also recommended as an option for hot flushes, night sweats, mood and sleep (that’s in addition to, not instead of, MHT.) Adding CBT to the menopause toolkit aligns with a biopsychosocial approach to women’s health, acknowledging that symptoms, stress, beliefs, work and social support contribute. A new article from the British Psychological Society includes an interview with Prof Aimee Spector from UCL’s Menopause Mind Lab, who points out that “…saying that CBT might help doesn’t mean that HRT won’t.” Read the ​BPS article here​.

🩸 A UCL study exploring the idea of cycle syncing for performance tracked cognition across the menstrual cycle in four groups of women (elite athletes, club-level, recreationally active, and inactive). Tiny improvements in reaction time (~30 ms) and fewer mistakes were seen around ovulation, mostly in the elite athletes. But overall fitness had a much larger effect on cognition than any cycle phase: inactive women reacted more slowly and less accurately across all phases compared to all other active groups. Also, 55% of all women believed their period impaired their cognitive performance but the testing didn’t support this subjective perception. Translation: for most of us, being fit and active shapes cognition more than cycle day. Read the original ​Sports Medicine article​ and a non-academic summary ​here​.

🎙️ Curious why everyone is talking about ADHD and menopause in the same breath? A team of five coaches from my Neuroscience Coaching Network have developed a 6-part podcast, called The Fog and The Fury. Their series explores the intersection of neurodiversity and female hormone fluctuations through expert interviews with neuroscientists and ADHD researchers. #proudteacher. New episodes will be released throughout October, and you can listen in via ​Spotify.​

🌏 A few weeks ago, I shared a micro-briefing about the role of the exposome on ageing. The exposome refers to the physical, environmental, and social factors that influence a person’s health throughout their lifetime. Another new study has now examined how the exposome impacts ageing, this time across 40 countries around the world. It found that poor air quality, lower income levels, social and gender inequality, and weak democracies were linked to accelerated ageing. Meanwhile, education levels protected against ageing, especially for women. This research was published in ​Nature Medicine​, with a non-academic summary by ​Scientific American​.

💕 Oxytocin is the hormone of love, right? Well as per usual in the world of neuroscience, it turns out it may not be quite that straightforward! Amongst its many other biological functions, oxytocin also plays a key role in helping our bodies and brains remain balanced, or in a state of homeostasis. In this article from The Scientist, learn how oxytocin builds our tolerance to stress. Read it here: ​The Goldilocks Hormone: Oxytocin Keeps the Body Resilient.​

🐾 As any fellow dog lover will attest, there’s something particularly special about having a canine companion. But do our pets help or harm our health? This is the question tackled recently by Tegan Taylor and Norman Swan on ABC’s What’s That Rash podcast. They cover pet-to-human disease transmission, allergies, cognition, mental health, physical activity, and more. Honestly, some of the answers (and the research) they share may surprise you! Listen to the episode: ​Is loving your pets bad for you?​

🧬 Huntington’s disease is a debilitating and progressive neurodegenerative disorder, with a life expectancy of just 10-15 years after symptoms start. There is currently no cure for Huntington’s disease. However, an exciting new gene therapy, delivered during a 12-to-18-hour brain surgery, has just been trialled. The treatment resulted in a massive 75% slowing of the disease, potentially giving people back decades of life. Though the findings are yet to undergo peer review, this landmark study gives tangible hope for those living with Huntington’s disease. ​Learn more in this Conversation article​ and also this ​BBC article​.

🙋‍♀️ In 2024, the Lancet Report on dementia prevention identified 14 modifiable risk factors that account for around 45% of the world’s dementia cases. A new paper has now identified four additional risk factors (poverty, sudden financial changes, income inequality, and HIV status) and accounted for the influence of sex on dementia risk. This updated model increased the proportion of preventable dementia cases to nearly 65%, with the additional risk factors playing a larger role for women and those in low- to middle-income countries. ​Read the corresponding paper in eBioMedicine​.

🧠 Multiple sclerosis or MS is another neurodegenerative disease, where the fatty insulation that covers neurons to allow them to signal correctly is damaged. Despite particularly affecting women, how the menopausal transition impacts MS has been poorly understood. But a new longitudinal study following midlife women with MS has found no associated disease progression or increased symptoms with menopause. This study was published in ​JAMA Neurology​, with a ​non-academic summary from Monash University here​.

💃 For decades, medical research underrepresented and excluded biological females. This sex bias was in part due to reduced funding for research into diseases that predominantly affect women. But finally, we’re starting to see brilliant research into women’s brain health, which I talk all about in both Baby Brain and the Women’s Brain Book. If you’re looking for a quick summary though, check out this article in Technology Networks that explores how menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, and polycystic ovary syndrome influence women’s brains. ​Read here​.

💬 “Women experience unique physiological events throughout their lives – from puberty and menstruation to pregnancy, menopause and more – that significantly affect their brains. Each of these stages presents unique challenges, influencing mental health, cognition and neurological function in ways that are only now being uncovered.” Rhianna-Lily Smith

🐧 Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to go to Antarctica on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, alongside a group of other incredible women in STEM. But even though I had an extraordinary time, the sensory deprivation and social isolation can be extreme enough to cause temporary changes to the brains of people who live more permanently in Antarctica. So, a new study is exploring how living in Antarctica can influence cognition and biology, with the results also planning to be used to help support astronauts on space missions. Learn more in ​this article from ABC News​.

🔚 Decisions are a whole-brain endeavour. New research in mice is showing that rather than being a straightforward pathway, decision-making happens simultaneously across both cortical and subcortical areas, including in regions never previously associated with decision-making. To learn more and watch the mouse brain light up with activity during a decision task, head to this article from The Transmitter: ​Everything everywhere all at once: Decision-making signals engage entire brain.​

😡 What is an emotion? It turns out that this is a particularly hard question for emotion researchers to answer. This confusion makes it all the more difficult to communicate emotion research with non-experts. In this article for The Transmitter, Prof Nicole Rust speaks to thirteen emotion experts, including the marvellous Prof Lisa Feldman Barrett, to get their takes on how to share the science of emotion with the world. Read it: ​Emotion research has a communication conundrum.​

🤖 The brain is a prediction machine. So, it makes sense that we’d see visual illusions, completing patterns based on our previous experiences. But how does the brain process visual information to form optical illusions on a cellular level? A new study identified the neurons responsible for recognising illusory shapes in mice to explore how the visual system completes incomplete information to create optical illusions. This research was published in ​Nature Neuroscience​, with a non-academic summary in ​The Scientist​.

🤷‍♀️ If medical research for women is sparse, research for neurodivergent women is almost non-existent. This is partly why many neurodivergent women were missed in childhood, only to receive diagnoses of autism and ADHD as adults. The lost generations of neurodivergent women are now left to navigate spaces that weren’t designed for them, whilst battling societal biases and medical trauma. In this article, AuDHD researcher Dr Emma Craddock shares her own experience and explores this wider public health issue. Read it here: ​‘You Don’t Look Autistic’: Why Neurodivergent Women Have Been Sidelined​.

💬 “I used to torture myself over why I was like this. Why did I get so upset about things that didn’t seem to bother others? I was intelligent and a high achiever despite leaving my work until the last minute and operating on a constant rollercoaster of high-productive peaks and deeply depressed troughs. Yet the many decisions, steps and multi-tasking involved in cooking a meal could send me over the edge. It didn’t make sense. I was constantly exhausted. People exhausted me. Life exhausted me. I now know I am dyspraxic, autistic and ADHD.” Dr Emma Craddock