Pregnancy overhauls a woman’s body. The brain is no exception.
A detailed study of a woman’s brain before, during and after pregnancy revealed sweeping neural changes, some of which stuck around months after her baby was born. The dataset, published September 16 in Nature Neuroscience, is the first comprehensive view of the neural changes that accompany gestation — a sort of “what to expect when you’re expecting” for the brain.
“The results of this case study are astonishing,” says neuroscientist Clare McCormack of New York University Langone Health. “Here we see, for the first time in humans, the extent of brain changes that are under way throughout pregnancy.”