Study shows brain changes in pregnancy
Researchers theorize alterations may help prepare for motherhood
NEW YORK — Pregnancy affects not only a woman’s body: It changes parts of her brain, too, a new study says.
When researchers compared brain scans of women before and after pregnancy, they spotted some differences in 11 locations. They also found hints that the alterations help women prepare for motherhood.
For example, they might help a mother understand the needs of her infant, explained Elseline Hoekzema, a study author at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
The women were also given memory tests, and they showed no signs of decline.
Hoekzema, a neuroscientist, began working on the study while at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain. She and colleagues present the results in a paper released Monday by the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The study includes data on 25 Spanish women scanned before and after their first pregnancies, along with 20 women who didn’t get pregnant. The brain changes in the pregnancy group emerged from comparisons of the groups.
The results were consistent: A computer program could tell which women had gotten pregnant just by looking at results of the MRI scans.
And the changes, first documented an average of 10 weeks after giving birth, were mostly still present two years later.
No brain changes were seen in first-time fathers.
Hoekzema and colleagues think the differences result from sex hormones that flood the brain of a pregnant woman. In the 11 places, the MRI data indicate reductions in volume of the brain’s gray matter, but it’s not clear what that means.
Some study results hint that such upgrades may prepare a woman for motherhood. One analysis linked brain changes to how strongly a woman felt emotionally attached to her infant. And when women viewed pictures of their babies, several brain regions that reacted the most were ones that showed pregnancy-related change.
The affected brain areas overlapped with circuitry that’s involved in figuring out what another person is thinking.