During a well-attended Studium Generale lecture at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Professor Ellen de Bruijn demonstrated how hormonal fluctuations influence the female brain. 'We urgently need more attention for the mental health of girls and women during transitional periods.'
Last Saturday, Ellen de Bruijn, Professor of Neurocognitive Clinical Psychology, gave a lecture on the impact of sex hormones on the brain and on women's mental health across the lifespan. She did so at Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, where the exhibition Unseen is currently on display, focusing on inequality in medical science. The topic closely aligns with the Changing Landscapes project, in which she and her team study the effects of hormonal fluctuations throughout the female life span.
Watch the lecture: hormones and their influence on the female brain and psyche (Dutch)
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Unique research
De Bruijn explains: 'What is unique is that we examine comparable processes in the brains of girls from the age of nine through to women aged sixty, and link those to health and wellbeing. We focus on cognitive, social and emotional processes that are crucial for daily functioning and motivational behaviour-processes that are also often disrupted in, for example, anxiety-related and depressive disorders.'
Flexibility of the female brain
According to De Bruijn and her colleagues, this field still receives structurally insufficient scientific attention. 'The brains of women undergo major reorganisations and renovations due to hormonal fluctuations and transitional periods, and we need to better understand this flexibility of the female brain. There must also be far greater awareness of the mental health of girls and women during these transitions, and of premenstrual disorders such as PMS, PMDD and PME. PMDD Netherlands, for instance, has been advocating for this for quite some time.'
About Changing Landscapes
The Changing Landscapes team consists of Mirjam Wever, Federica Lucchi, Anne Nijboer, Antonia Rulitschka, Marieke Tollenaar, Peter Putman, Eleni Prinea and Vanessa Kopper. The researchers are currently in the middle of data collection. The project website for Changing Landscapes will be launched soon.
