A pioneering study shows pregnancy causes significant brain changes, shrinking regions like the cortex while enhancing connectivity. In a recent study in Nature Neuroscience , researchers explored neuroanatomic changes in the human brain during pregnancy. Background Pregnancy is a time of extraordinary neuroplasticity , demonstrating the brain's potential to undergo adaptive, hormonally-driven neuroanatomical changes after puberty.
During gestation, the mother's body makes physiological changes to assist fetal growth, such as increases in metabolic rate, serum volume, oxygen needs, and immunological control. Considerable elevations in hormone synthesis, particularly progesterone and estrogen, rapidly alter and rearrange central nervous system (CNS) tissues. However, the alterations in the mother's brain during gestation are unclear.
About the study The present precision imaging study mapped neural changes in the maternal brain during pregnancy. A primiparous lady aged 38 had 26 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and blood samples between three weeks preconception and two years postpartum. She had no pregnancy difficulties, had vaginal full-term delivery, and breastfed for 16 months post-delivery.
She did not smoke and had no prior head trauma, endocrine abnormalities, or neuropsychiatric diseases. Researchers performed high-resolution diffusion imaging and segmented the medial temporal lobe (MTL). They analyzed T1-weighted and diffusion MRI scans to study the whole brain .