YOUR 30s: NOW IT’S BABY BRAIN

Your f ace m ay s till l ook y outhful a t 30 but the brain’s ability to remember things is already declining.

This is due to falling levels of the chemicals that relay messages between your brain cells, which is part of the normal ageing process.

Your b rain i s n ow a lso s hrinking a t a rate of about 2 per cent every d ecade, as cells die away in the p refrontal cortex, an area important for forming new memories and learning.

That means a new skill or foreign l anguage m ay t ake longer to learn—and remembering the names of people to whom y ou h ave j ust been introduced is probably a little more difficult.

As this is the age when most women will start families, t hey m ay also be hit by ‘baby b rain’, w hich scientists believe is a genuinephenomenon.

It’s t hought t he s urge of hormones that comes with pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding — especially the ‘bonding hormone’ oxytocin, which has b een f ound t o n umb t he m emory — makes new mums moreabsent-minded.

In one study, researchers at the university o f B radford s et o ut t o t est the memory needed to remember things such as where you left your keys or parked your car.

Whentheycomparedagroupofwomenwhowerepregnantwithagroup who were not, they found the mums-to-be did much worse on memory t ests — a nd w ere j ust a s f orgetful three months after they had their babies and their hormone levels returned to normal.

However, it seems there are compensations. This week an analysis of data published in New Scientist magazine concluded that while motherhood may make new mums more scatterbrained, it also primes the b rain f or e mpathy, r easoning a nd judgment, s o t hey c an b etter p rotect and look after their infants.