Pregnancy shrinks parts of the brain. That sounds bad. Throw in the forgetfulness and fogginess, or “momnesia,” that many moms report, and what’s left is the notion that for the brain, the transition to motherhood is a net loss.
“I see it on social media all the time,” says neuroscientist and therapist Jodi Pawluski of the University of Rennes in France. “Your brain shrunk. This is why [you] forget everything.”
But that’s just not true, Pawluski says. The perception that the maternal brain is dysfunctional has gone on long enough: It’s time to “start giving the maternal brain the credit it deserves,” Pawluski and her colleagues write February 6 in in JAMA Neurology.
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Pregnancy does kick-start structural changes in the brain, including a loss of gray matter. But the loss isn’t automatically a bad thing — reductions can reflect a fine-tuning process that makes the brain more efficient (SN: 3/18/22).
During the transition to motherhood, the brain reorganizes its connections, strengthening those that are useful and letting go of those that aren’t, Pawluski says. This reorganization prepares the brain “to learn rapidly to keep a baby alive,” she says.
In a 2016 study, for example, researchers reported brain changes, including reductions, that appear to foster attachment to a new baby (SN: 12/19/16). Other work by this team found pregnancy-triggered decreases in the volume of the ventral striatum, a region involved in motivation and reward. Those reductions in mothers’ brains were associated with a heightened responsiveness toward their babies, the team reported in Psychoneuroendocrinology in 2020.
Still, many pregnant and postpartum women do report memory loss….
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