Estrogen vital to hearing

ROCHESTER, N.Y., May 6 (UPI) -- The hormone estrogen plays a direct role in how the brain processes sounds, U.S. scientists said.

The study, published in The Journal of Neuroscience, found estrogen is a key molecule carrying brain signals, and that the right balance of hormone levels in men and women is important for reasons beyond its role as a sex hormone.

"We've discovered estrogen doing something totally unexpected," lead study author Raphael Pinaud of New York's University of Rochester said in a statement. "We show that estrogen plays a central role in how the brain extracts and interprets auditory information. It does this on a scale of milliseconds in neurons, as opposed to days, months or even years in which estrogen is more commonly known to affect an organism."

Pinaud said the researchers were surprised to learn that blocking either the actions of estrogen directly, or preventing brain cells from producing estrogen within auditory centers essentially shut down the signaling necessary for the brain to process sounds. The researchers also found estrogen activated genes that instruct the brain to lay down memories of those sounds.