Baby brain is real, but has nothing to do with being ditzy or forgetful. Instead, a study suggests, it is about preparation for becoming a mother.
For the first time, scans have shown that having a baby changes a woman’s brain, possibly permanently — and it may even be that the greater the changes are, the better the woman adjusts to her new role.
The research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, looked at the brains of 25 first-time mothers before and after pregnancy, and two years later. It found that there were major structural changes in regions traditionally associated with empathising and understanding another person’s needs.
Compared with women who had not been pregnant, there was a significant reduction in grey matter in these areas, leading Elseline Hoekzema, from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, to suggest it may be an adaptive change to make women better mothers.
“The ability to understand what someone is thinking, feeling and intending is the kind of thing a mother needs,” she said. “You can imagine that someone who relates to and recognises the needs of an infant would do better in taking care of children.”
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Although a drop in grey matter sounds like a negative effect, it is not necessarily so. “There’s another period characterised by a great reduction in grey matter volume — adolescence,” Dr Hoekzema said .
“This is a very necessary process, which involves the pruning of unnecessary synapses and that is thought to lead to a more efficient and specialised network.”
So consistent was the effect that the scientists could tell from the scans alone who had been pregnant.
The scientists believed the changes were big enough that they could not be accounted for simply as being an environmental response to the experiences of being a parent. Instead, they seemed to be related to the major physiological and hormonal effects of pregnancy.
In follow-up tests, the researchers showed that when women looked at their babies, the parts of the brain that responded mapped on to those that had changed — implying they must be important in child-rearing. The changes in brain matter volume also seemed to predict which women would report problems with attachment to their babies.
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Dr Hoekzema said that she hoped further research could investigate this, especially as so little work had so far been done into the neurological effects of pregnancy. “Since most women undergo pregnancy, it’s really strange we know so little about how it affects their brains,” she said.