AXIOS September 17, 2024
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...
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