For the first time, researchers have mapped out the very real physical changes of “pregnancy brain,” the changes that a mother’s brain undergoes while carrying a baby.
There’s “so much about the neurobiology of pregnancy that we don’t understand yet,” Dr. Emily Jacobs, associate professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at UC Santa Barbara and the study’s senior author said, according to CNN.
“And it’s not because women are too complicated. … It’s a byproduct of the fact that the biomedical sciences have historically ignored women’s health. It’s 2024, and this is the first glimpse we have at this fascinating neurobiological transition.”
Researchers followed a 38-year-old woman three weeks before conception, and two years postpartum, tracking the changes to her brain via a series of 26 MRI scans. Their findings were published in the journal Nature, providing one of the first-ever maps of the changes a pregnant woman’s brain can undergo.
And some of these structural changes were still present two years after birth, the study found.
By the ninth week of pregnancy, researchers found decreases in gray matter volume (GMV), while cerebrospinal fluid and white matter microstructure increased. These physical changes may be the brain’s way of preparing to bond with the baby.
As the Cleveland Clinic explains, “grey matter is the seat of a human’s unique ability to think and reason. The grey matter is the place where the processing of sensation, perception, voluntary movement, learning, speech and cognition takes place.”
In the case of pregnancy, the study says the “decreases in GMV may reflect ‘fine-tuning’ of the brain by neuromodulatory hormones in preparation for parenthood.”
“These behavioral adaptations are critical,” the study says, “to meet the demands of caring for the offspring.”
Stock image of pregnant people.
Andrey Popov/Getty
The research cites other studies that say “GMV reductions in areas of the brain [are] important for social cognition and the magnitude of these changes corresponds with increased parental attachment.”
Increased white matter, however, may “facilitate communication between emotional and visual processing hub,” the study says.
“Deeper examination of cellular and systems-level mechanisms will improve our understanding of how pregnancy remodels specific circuits to promote maternal behavior,” the study says.
The authors say that continuing to extensively track the brain during pregnancy may also help with determining someone’s risk of developing adverse health outcomes like depression, epilepsy, headaches, multiple sclerosis and more.
“Precision mapping of the maternal brain lays the groundwork for a greater understanding of the subtle and sweeping structural, functional, behavioral and clinical changes that unfold across pregnancy.”
