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How does pregnancy change a woman's brain?
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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We know a lot about the relationship between the health of a pregnant mother and the behavior, mood, cognitive and psychological development of her child after birth.
But how does pregnancy change the mother's brain?
"Pregnancy is a critical period for the state of the central nervous system in the mother," says psychologist Laura M. Glynn Chapman University - "However, we know practically nothing about it."
Glynn and her colleague Kurt A. Sandman of the University of California Irvine conducted a detailed study of the state of the brain of pregnant women.
During pregnancy, a woman experiences massive hormonal fluctuations, as at no other period of life. The study shows that reproductive hormones prepare a woman's brain for motherhood - help her become more resistant to stress and adapted to her child's needs. This explains why mothers often wake up when the baby starts to move, while they are fast asleep even with a strong snoring of the spouse.
The study also clarifies the mechanisms of the prenatal environment impact on the child. For example, the impact of maternal malnutrition or depression on the health of the child. The relationship between the conditions of life in the womb and life in the environment is of great importance for the child. The fruit, whose mother is undernourished, adapts to the deficit and cope with the lack of food in the womb, however, after birth, it can become obese, even with normal nutrition. Stress and anxiety of the mother in early and late pregnancy can also affect the child's cognitive development in the future.
Just like the mother constantly affects the fetus, the same thing does the fetus for her mother. Fetal movements, even when the mother does not suspect anything, raises the frequency of heartbeats and the sensitivity of the skin. Fetal cells pass through the placenta into the mother's blood. "Interestingly, these cells are attracted by certain parts of the mother's brain," which change maternal behavior, says Glynn.
In conclusion, Glynn warns that most of the studies of the maternal brain have been carried out on rodents whose pregnancy is very different from women. Therefore it is necessary to conduct more research with human participation.
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