From the article:
Previous studies have hinted at a connection between estrogen and hearing in women who have low estrogen, such as often occurs after menopause, says Pinaud. No one understood, however, that estrogen was playing such a direct role in determining auditory functions in the brain, he says. “Now it is clear that estrogen is a key molecule carrying brain signals, and that the right balance of hormone levels in men and women is important for reasons beyond its role as a sex hormone,” says Pinaud.
Pinaud, along with Liisa Tremere, a research assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and Jin Jeong, a postdoctoral fellow in Pinaud’s laboratory, demonstrated that increasing estrogen levels in brain regions that process auditory information caused heightened sensitivity of sound-processing neurons, which encoded more complex and subtle features of the sound stimulus. Perhaps more surprising, says Pinaud, is that by blocking either the actions of estrogen directly, or preventing brain cells from producing estrogen within auditory centers, the signaling that is necessary for the brain to process sounds essentially shuts down. Pinaud’s team also shows that estrogen is required to activate genes that instruct the brain to lay down memories of those sounds.