Dr. Mark D'Esposito

And what she brought to my attention at the time, and it was embarrassing that I didn't know,

was that the frontal lobes are full of estrogen receptors.

There's probably more estrogen receptors in the frontal lobes than any other part of the brain.

In men and women.

Estrogen boosts dopamine.

So higher estrogen levels correlates with increased dopamine.

levels and there was some anecdotal evidence that in postmenopausal women who were put on estrogen that their working memory improved and there was a kind of evolving link between estrogen and frontal lobe function and she did this amazing study

where she studied healthy Berkeley undergraduates at two points in time during the menstrual cycle when estrogen was at its lowest and what was its highest.

And she also genotyped them for this enzyme they were talking about to know if they were sort of lower or higher on the dopamine level.

And then put them in the scanner and measured frontal function and showed that there was a clear...

frontal lobe function was modulated by where they were in their estrogen cycle.

When they were low estrogen, they were low dopamine.

And if they were low estrogen and low dopamine to start, they really had decreased frontal lobe function and decreased working memory ability.

So it fluctuated based on this interaction between estrogen and dopamine, suggesting that not only is dopamine important, but hormones are important.

clearly important and they work synergistically.

So, you know, as we're developing this cocktail, we certainly have to bring hormones into the equation and learn more about it.

There's just so little information about hormones and cognition.

Yeah, it's actually boosting dopamine activity.

So it's making more dopamine available.

Yeah, yeah.