Pregnancy changes the brain: study
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Repeated scans revealed how a woman's brain underwent significant and sometimes lasting neurological changes during pregnancy that may help build parental instincts.
Why it matters: The findings published Monday in Nature Neuroscience could help researchers understand why some new parents develop postpartum depression and other neurological conditions that appear during or are worsened by pregnancy.
State of play: Many women experience so-called "mommy brain" — fogginess and forgetfulness during and just after pregnancy. But the study suggests the changes in the brain go much farther than that.
- Brain changes during pregnancy are "likely an evolutionarily-tuned suite of adaptations to help maternal behavior and bonding," Elizabeth Chrastil, the study's author and subject, wrote on X.
Zoom in: Chrastil, a neuroscientist at UC Irvine, scanned her own brain 26 times before, during and after her pregnancy, and then studied how it changed over time.
- The volume of grey matter in the brain, which plays a central role in memories and emotions, shrank during pregnancy and stayed that way for at least two years. These changes could help prepare the brain for parenthood's unique challenges, the study suggests.
- But the connections between brain regions became stronger in early pregnancy before returning to normal after birth.
- The transition to motherhood created changes in most regions of the brain, the study said.
What's next: Scientists have already started a larger project to see if the same effects are seen in other mothers, the Washington Post reported.
