science

14786 readers

52 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.

2024-11-11

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

184

Pregnancy completely rewires mothers' brains — study (www.dw.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The researchers found sweeping changes in overall brain neuroanatomy which unfolded week by week during the pregnancy.

Inside Chrastil's brain, grey matter volume, cortical thickness, white matter microstructure, and ventricle volume all changed.

The changes were all over the brain too — "over 80% of my brain regions showed reductions in grey matter volume," Chrastil said.

Neuroanatomical changes observed over the course of a human pregnancy. Published by Pritschet, L., Taylor, C.M., Cossio, D. et al. in Nature Neuroscience (September 2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-024-01741-0

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

this is the first study to consistently map brain changes during pregnancy, write the study authors in their paper.

"It's 2024 and this is the first glimpse we have of this fascinating neurological transition. There is so much about the neurobiology of pregnancy we don't understand yet. It's a biproduct of the fact that biosciences have historically ignored women's health," said Jacobs.

I knew that there were fundamental neurological changes that occurred during pregnancy, but had no idea that there hadn't been a comprehensive brain mapping study done yet. There is a surprising amount of sexism in academia.