Brain pain

Auuuugh.

Brain hurts. Multiple factors I believe. Largest having to deal with this article from SciAm.
Oral contraceptives and brain plasticity. Are you really "yourself" when taking estrogen/progesterone or whatever combo. Maybe no. (Side note: What constitutes a person anyway?)

Timing is fitting. I took my last oral contraceptive pill today so I'm beginning an additional log to monitor changes as time progresses away from that era. Just the usual, blood pressure, body weight, mood fluctuations. Good thing I keep fairly good journals. The coding on my writing style can be a bit time consuming.

Anyway.
So SciAm posts this review on a study monitoring the effects of hormonal contraceptives and brain plasticity. Great, but they don't give a link to the article! Just to pubmeds main page!

Auuugh.
This is where my pain really sets in. I wanted to see this study. So now I'm digging through pubmed to try and locate it.
More pain as I realize that SciAm doesn't list the author, the title, or really much of anything that could help me locate it. Just the name of the Journal and that it was published "recently"

Ah, found it. Maybe the article did have the author. Just halfway down and it looked like Pfizer. So, naturally I thought it was the drug company.
My bad....

Bah. I don't want to purchase anything. I just want to read the article.
It's times like this I wish more people thought like Cory Doctorow.
Who needs copyright? Make everything creative commons and we can get along and share nicely...

Plus, I can read those articles if I wish.
Anyway, enough rant about how I can't read it. Lets dive right in and discuss it.

Oooh ohh! I found it!
Wow, it's at this point I wish I had my sisters' brain.
This is confusing stuff.

This study assessed grey matter volume in men, women using hormonal contraceptives and women not using hormonal contraceptives. The women not on contraceptives were assessed twice. Once when estrogen/progesterone levels were high (folicular) and again when they were low (mid-luteal).
For the scans they utilized the fMRI machine. A functional MRI maps blood flow and oxygen. This is based on the theory that neuronal activity is reflected by greater consumption of O2.
So the fMRI lights up the areas where O2 consumption is high, and we believe that area of the brain to be "workin."

All in all what they found is women on hormonal contraceptives had a minor inlargement of the prefrontal cortex.
This is the part that known as your "personality" in layman's terms.
They don't discuss how this effect anything, just that there are differences. So conclusions about behavior cannot really be drawn from this study. Only that brain plasticity and structure is affected by hormonal regulation. Hormonal regulation is enhanced by hormonal contraceptives.

Limitations?
They don't specify what type of hormonal contraceptives the women used. Oral, injections, etc. Nor do they separate the estrogen/progesterone group from the progesterone only group.
I don't think they administered hormones to the male population either, it's tough to tell.

Now my brain really hurts.

I purchased the 6th edition of the APA publication guide. I think I go read that. It might make the headache go away...