Home Hormones , sex When women are in the mood to make a baby

When women are in the mood to make a baby

Catherine McDiarmid-Watt | Tuesday, February 13, 2007 | 0 comments

IT MIGHT seem unlikely, but the mood swings many women experience every month may serve an evolutionary purpose - to get them pregnant.

Levels of sex hormones such as oestrogen and progesterone fluctuate throughout the monthly cycle. During the follicular phase at the start of the cycle, the egg is maturing and the body releases oestrogen, while during the luteal phase, when a fertilised egg might implant, progesterone is secreted.

To see how these might influence the brain, Jean-Claude Dreher and colleagues at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, used functional MRI to look at how brain activity changes over the course of the month.

The team scanned the brains of 15 women at different stages in their menstrual cycle as they played a game with hypothetical prizes of money. During the follicular phase, the orbitofrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with decision making and ...

Source: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg19325894.600-when-women-are-in-the-mood-to-make-a-baby.html

Category: Hormones, sex

About Catherine: I am mom to three grown sons, two grandchildren and two rescue dogs. After years of raising my boys as a single mom, I remarried a wonderful man who had never had a child of his own. Unexpectedly, I found myself pregnant at 49!
Sadly we lost that precious baby at 8 weeks, and decided to try again. Five more losses, turned down for donor egg, foster care and adoption due to my age and losses - we have accepted that there will be no more babies in our house.

Find Catherine on Google+ - Circle us on Google+ - Join us on Facebook - Follow us on Twitter

0 comments

WE LOVE COMMENTS!
Don't just sit there, reading this story or article - say something! Do you believe it? Do you think it is impossible? Do you wish it was you? Do you have a story to share (it might get published!)

NOTE: Comments are moderated - just to stop the spambots - and so may take up to a few hours to be approved.

Catherine reserves the right to review, edit, refuse or delete any comment.