Estrogen makes the brain a sex organ.

s estrogen a sex hormone or a neurotransmitter? Estrogen has welldocumen-ted actions on several neurotransmitter systems, including serotonergic, adrenergic, and cholinergic pathways and receptors. However, recent advances from molecular neuroscience reveal that estrogen does not appear to act like a traditional neurotransmitter. Recall that chemical neurotransmission occurs in the synapses between cells and at receptors within neuronal membranes. Information is then relayed from the external membrane to cellular headquarters, namely the DNA in the cell nucleus. Neurotransmitters relay their messages via a chemical pony express of many semembrane, and connects to its estrogen receptors right in the cell nucleus, next to the DNA. No need for the pony express here, for estrogen is itself the transcription factor. When genes are activated, all sorts of events can occur in a cell. The effects of estrogen on gene expression have been most extensively studied