Study, 2014
Does how you process emotions change across your menstrual cycle?
Yes. Your brain responds more strongly to moderately and highly negative images during your premenstrual phase compared to other cycle phases, even when the emotional strength of the images is the same.
What they did
Researchers showed women neutral, moderately negative, and highly negative images while recording their brain activity. They compared brain responses during the premenstrual phase and follicular phase.
What they found
During the late luteal (premenstrual) phase, brain activity was larger for moderately negative images compared to neutral images. In the follicular phase, this difference did not happen. For highly negative images, brain activity was larger in the late luteal phase than in the follicular phase. Women were also more accurate at identifying highly negative images than neutral ones.
What it means for you
You may be more sensitive to negative information during your premenstrual phase, which could partially explain why mood changes happen at that time. This is a controlled lab study, so it is not clear if these findings apply to emotions in daily life. The study involved a small group and needs repeating.
About the study
- Original title
- The mediation effect of menstrual phase on negative emotion processing: evidence from N2
- Authors
- Wu H, Chen C, Cheng D et al.
- Journal
- Social neuroscience
- Year
- 2014
- Study design
- Study
- What was tested
- Viewing negative, moderately negative, and neutral images while brain activity was recorded
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2014.886617