Memory functioning at menopause: Impact of age in ovariectomized women

Estrogens are known to act selectively on some components of memory, exerti ng beneficial effects on cognitive performances. However, there are few dat a on the longterm effect of the lack of estrogen in postmenopausal women. T herefore, we investigated attentive and verbal memory performances in physi ological and surgical menopause, drawing attention to the impact of age at menopause, and we compared a well-known aging and estrogen-dependent index, the entity of bone mass loss to memory functioning. No significant differe nces were found in the mean scores of attentive and psychomotor performance s between physiological and surgical menopause, whereas a lower number of r ecalled words (recency effect = PS2) was found in surgical menopause (p < 0 .001) in comparison to physiological menopause. In addition, both the age a t the time of ovariectomy (r = 0.47; p = 0.014) and the years since surgery (r = -0.64; p 0.000) correlated to short-term verbal memory performance (P S2) with better scores when surgery occurred later in women's lives. Surgic al menopause is able to affect short-term verbal memory more than physiolog ical menopause and seems to represent a critical negative event within the female brain, in particular when it occurs prematurely.