By Tongyue Zhang
A new Rutgers initiative aims to fill decades of critical research gaps and deliver science-backed resources to support women’s unique brain health needs throughout every life stage.
Women experience distinct biological transitions throughout life – including puberty, pregnancy, motherhood, menopause and aging – that profoundly shape brain health. For generations, medical research and clinical trials have systematically excluded females, creating widespread gaps in scientific understanding of women’s brain function, disease vulnerability and neurological resilience, according to historical records from the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health.
To correct this longstanding oversight, the Rutgers Brain Health Institute has launched the Women’s Brain Health Initiative, a new program dedicated to advancing targeted research and public education for women’s brain health.
As a flagship effort, the initiative leverages the institute’s expansive research mission spanning neurodevelopment, neurodegeneration, and mental health disorders.
“Women’s brain health has been ignored for decades — that time is coming to an end,” said Gary Aston-Jones, director of the Brain Health Institute.
He said the institute and other research organizations “are extending efforts to reverse this oversight.”
Aston-Jones added that this focus by the institute “represents incredible opportunities not only for women’s brain health, but for all brain health. By focusing on women’s specific issues, we are confident that we will discover new insights into brain mechanisms in general. These new findings will benefit brain health for everyone.”
Women represent half of the global population and have longer average lifespans than men, yet they bear a disproportionate burden of neurological and mental health conditions. Women face higher prevalence rates for Alzheimer’s disease, depression, migraines, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, eating disorders and chronic pain conditions. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, women account for nearly two-thirds of all Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease. Notably, females also demonstrate greater resilience against certain neurological conditions, including stroke, traumatic brain injury and Parkinson’s disease. Researchers say uncovering the biological foundations of these unique vulnerabilities and resilience will advance brain health research for all people.
Dedicated to transforming women’s brain health research and outreach, the Women’s Brain Health Initiative will center core missions of understanding, empowering and improving long-term brain health outcomes for women across the lifespan. The initiative encompasses basic cellular and animal research alongside clinical studies of human patients living with female-specific brain health challenges, while translating rigorous research into clear, trustworthy, actionable resources for women and their families.
The initiative is guided by four foundational goals: support cutting-edge research to solve women’s most pressing brain health challenges; translate groundbreaking lab research into accessible community resources; equip women with research-backed knowledge to make proactive, informed brain health decisions; and drive public awareness of how unique female biological transitions impact lifelong brain function.
Moving forward, the Women’s Brain Health Initiative will highlight Rutgers faculty leading female brain health research, host distinguished global speakers advancing the field and publish research-vetted toolkits and public resources for women’s brain health. This month, the Initiative is proud to highlight the work of Tracey Shors, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology at Rutgers-New Brunswick, with a powerful and hopeful message: the female brain is not defined by stress or trauma — it is dynamic, resilient and capable of remarkable recovery.
Leading the initiative is Ioana Carcea, associate professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and Neuroscience at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and a core faculty member at the Brain Health Institute. Carcea heads a systems neuroscience laboratory exploring the intersections of social behavior, physiology and health, with a focus on how biological states shape maternal and social behaviors and how life experiences alter brain function and long-term health.
“Women’s physiology poses unique challenges to brain function and behavior. Across puberty, pregnancy and menopause, the female brain undergoes extraordinary biological transitions that shape vulnerability and resilience to mental and neurological disorders,” Carcea said. “Now we have the tools, the knowledge and the will to understand how the female brain navigates multiple profound transitions across the lifespan. I am excited for the WBHI to be at the forefront of this emerging area of research.”
