Pregnancy is a transformative time in a person's life where the body undergoes rapid physiological adaptations to prepare for motherhood -; that we all know. What has remained something of a mystery is what the sweeping hormonal shifts brought on by pregnancy are doing to the brain. Researchers in Professor Emily Jacobs' lab at UC Santa Barbara have shed light on this understudied area with the first-ever map of a human brain over the course of pregnancy.
"We wanted to look at the trajectory of brain changes specifically within the gestational window," said Laura Pritschet, lead author of a paper just published in Nature Neuroscience (link) . Previous studies had taken snapshots of the brain before and after pregnancy, she said, but never have we witnessed the pregnant brain in the midst of this metamorphosis. Following one first-time mother, the researchers scanned her brain every few weeks, starting before pregnancy and continuing through two years postpartum.
The data, collected in collaboration with Elizabeth Chrastil's team at UC Irvine, reveal changes in the brain's gray and white matter across gestation, suggesting that the brain is capable of astonishing neuroplasticity well into adulthood. Their precision imaging approach allowed them to capture dynamic brain reorganization in the participant in exquisite detail. This approach complements early studies that compared women's brains pre- and post-pregnancy.
The authors noted, "our goal was to fill the gap and understan.