Women's brains shrink after pregnancy

A study shows that the post-pregnancy women's brain will reduce social functions to focus on the ability to predict and understand infant needs.

Many women during pregnancy and after having a baby often complain about memory loss and concentration. Research published recently in Nature Neuroscience partly explains this phenomenon, when it was discovered that a woman's brain was shrinking after pregnancy , QZ reported on May 14.

In this study, Dutch scientist Elseline Hoekzema and Spanish psychologist Erika Barba-Muller said that memory loss in post-pregnant women is associated with the phenomenon of "brain removal set " usually happens to people at the age of three and during the youth period.

At a young age, this process helps correct nerve connections, supports the specialization of brain circuits, plays an important role in health awareness, emotional development and social consciousness. .

According to scientists, pregnancy makes the mother's brain go away.(Artwork: Reuters).

According to the study, in pregnant women, the decline in gray matter is likely to help women improve their ability to perceive thoughts of others, very useful for predicting and understanding the needs of newborns.

Scientists scanned the brains of 25 women who were about to be mothers and 19 male partners. This group of people is taken back to the brain when pregnancy ends. The control group included 20 women who never gave birth and 17 male partners.

Scientists have not obtained evidence of conscious loss in pregnant women. However, after birth, they performed poorly in oral memory tests."Sometimes less is more. Reducing volume does not necessarily mean a decrease in function , " Hoekzema said.

The reduced part of the brain is mainly in the area of ​​the frontal cortex and temporal lobe, which are thought to be associated with social consciousness and other functions.

Two years later, scientists continued to brainwash unborn babies (11 people), detecting that the amount of reduction has not yet recovered, except in the hippocampus in the anterior brain, the brain region involved. with memory.

Women with more changed brains seem to be more closely related to their children.

According to Kim Yonkers, a psychologist, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale University, the brain areas where the decline is associated with functions that are not associated with social consciousness, such as depression and control control pain. The reduction in brain volume is also likely to help women forget the labor pain.

The phenomenon of brain volume reduction in rodents helps maternal mice improve their ability to find food. Scientists identify the evolutionary pressure in humans that has likely accelerated the change that takes place in social processes.