Hormone effects on fMRI and cognitive measures of encoding Importance of hormone preparation

We compared fMRI and cognitive data from nine hormone therapy (HT)–naive women with data from women exposed to either opposed conjugated equine estrogens (CEE) (n 10) or opposed estradiol (n 4). Exposure to either form of HT was associated with healthier fMRI response; however, CEE-exposed women exhibited poorer memory performance than either HT-naive or estradiol-exposed subjects. These preliminary findings emphasize the need to characterize differential neural effects of various HTs.