As women enter menopause, their levels of physical activity decrease, but it hasn’t been understood why.
Now scientists have found a connection between lack of ovarian hormones and changes in the brain’s pleasure center—a hotspot in the brain that processes and reinforces messages related to reward, pleasure, activity, and motivation for physical exercise.
For the study, published in the journal Physiology and Behavior, researchers compared the physical activity of rats that were highly fit to rats that had lower fitness levels. They studied the rats’ use of running wheels set up in the cages before and after the rats had their ovaries removed. They also examined gene-expression changes of dopamine receptors within the brain’s pleasure center.
