Neuroscientist Carina Heller has joined a cadre of investigators who are filling in gaps in women’s health research by hopping into brain-imaging machines themselves. Credit: Ann-Christine Buck
Ask anyone in science and it’s known that areas that get the most funding are issues that affect more men than women, such as heart disease and prostate cancer. She had a question and got some of her own answers: A scientist in the US scanned her own brain over the period of a year to document how the brain is affected by the birth control pill. We know that some women report weight gain and other unwanted side-effects, and now we have a look into the brain.
For 75 days over the span of a year University of Minnesota neuroscientist Carina Heller’s morning ritual included climbing into her university’s brain scanner at 7:30 a.m. and lying perfectly still for an hour and a half — without falling asleep. She believes she is the most scanned woman in science.
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She found a rhythmic pattern of change in brain volume and connectivity between brain regions over the course of her natural cycle, with volume and connectivity dipping slightly while she was taking the pill. Heller has joined a group of investigators filling gaps in women’s health research by scanning their own brains.
Her work builds on the work of Laura Pritschet who is now a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Pritschet scanned her brain for 30 consecutive days during her natural menstrual cycle and then for 30 more days while taking oral contraceptives in a project Pritschet calls 28andMe, after the genetics firm 23andMe in South San Francisco.
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Heller’s goal was to catalogue how her brain changes during her menstrual cycle, with and without oral contraceptives and what that might mean for women’s health. Her research might inform women as to whether or not they want to take the birth control pill which alters a woman’s hormone cycle.
It’s just the beginning but her findings suggest that brain morphology and connectivity change daily throughout the natural cycle and are influenced by birth-control pills with preliminary results presented at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference.
This begs the question: Could a male birth control pill be the answer?
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist, innovation strategist, and founder of Green Prophet, one of the Middle East’s pioneering sustainability platforms. She has ranked in the Top 10 of Verizon innovation competitions, participated in NASA-linked challenges, and spoken worldwide on climate, food security, and future resilience. With an IoT technology patent, features in Canada’s National Post, and leadership inside teams building next-generation agricultural and planetary systems — including Mars-farming concepts — Karin operates at the intersection of storytelling, science, and systems change. She doesn’t report on the future – she helps design it. Reach out directly to [email protected]
