Change in auditory and visuospatial working memory with phases of menstrual cycle: A prospective study of three consecutive cycles

Abstract

The menstrual cycle is a well-known physiological model used to study working memory (WM) function. The present study examined auditory and visuospatial WM during proliferative and secretory phases of three consecutive menstrual cycles. Forty young adult females with a mean age of 23.4 ± 4.2 years and a history of regular menstrual cycle were selected for this study. Computerized software-based dual-task n-back WM tasks were performed by each participant during the proliferative (day 10th – 14th) and secretory phases (day 21st – 25th) of the menstrual cycle. The above tasks were repeated for three consecutive menstrual cycles during follow-up. Data from the three menstrual cycles were pooled and compared between the proliferative and secretory phases. Significant differences were observed in the hit rate (p = 0.006), Z score (p = 0.004) and parametric sensitivity (p = 0.005) of visuospatial targets and Z score (p = 0.037) and parametric sensitivity (p = 0.028) of auditory targets with better performance during the secretory phase. However, no significant differences were found across the three proliferative or three secretory phases, indicating that the results were consistent across consecutive cycles. This study concluded that visuospatial and auditory WM skills were significantly improved during the secretory phase compared to the proliferative phase of the menstrual cycle.