The smarter a woman is during childhood, the more likely she will begin menopause later in life, researchers say. The finding, reported in the 22 July issue of Neurology, suggests that the link between hormones and brain development might be stronger than researchers suspected.
Since 1946, the U.K. Medical Research Council has collected medical, psychological, and demographic data on more than 5000 people as part of a National Survey of Health and Development. Five times in the last half-century the volunteers have taken tests on everything from verbal and nonverbal reasoning to algebra and visual memory.
Tapping into this database, psychologist Marcus Richards of University College London and his colleagues persuaded 1572 female participants to answer yearly questionnaires--starting at age 47--on their menstrual cycles. After collecting 4 years of data, Richards and his group plotted the women's test scores against their age at menopause. After adjusting for factors such as education, number of children, and socioeconomic status, they found that higher cognitive scores correlated with later menopause. The relationship was strongest with test scores at ages 8 and 11.
Other research has shown that hormones, including estrogen, can influence both brain development and reproductive aging. This study pushes the connection back to an earlier age than researchers had suspected, says Susan Resnick, a psychologist at the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland.
