A woman’s brain changes dramatically during pregnancy

Pregnancy causes huge and already known changes in the female body, and new research shows that the brain is undergoing major changes, some transient and some long lasting.

Scientists say they first mapped the changes that occur when the female brain is reorganized in response to pregnancy, based on scans made 26 times, starting three weeks before conception, up to nine months of pregnancy, and then two years after childbirth.

The study documented a widespread reduction in the volume of cortical gray matter, the wrinkled region of the most distant layer of the brain, as well as an increase in white mass microstructural integrity located deeper into the brain. The two changes coincided with increased levels of estradiol and progesterone hormones.

– The gray matter is made up of cellular bodies of the nerve cells of the brain, while white matter is made up of bundles of axons, nerve cells that carry signals in long -distance links. It is quite shocking that in 2024 we have almost no information on what is happening in the brain during pregnancy. This work raises more questions than it answers, and we just scratch the surface of those questions – says Elizabeth Christil, a cognitive neurologist at the University of California, where this study was conducted.

Cristil said she was unaware of data showing changes in her brain during the study and that she did not feel otherwise. Scientists have said that after the study is completed, they have noticed the same model for several other pregnant women who have been scanning the brain in an ongoing research initiative called a native brain project aimed at increasing the number of respondents to hundreds.

– Previous studies have scanning the brain before and after pregnancy. But we have never seen brain metamorphosis – adds Emily Jacobs, a neurologist at the University of California.

The scan showed an average decrease of about 4 percent of gray matter in approximately 80 percent of the regions of the brain. The little recovery after childbirth did not restore the volume of levels before pregnancy. Researchers say it is unclear whether the loss of gray matter is a bad thing. They also showed an increase of about 10 percent in the microstructive integrity of white mass, a measure of health and quality of connections between the brain regions, with the peak at the end of the second and early third trimester, then restoring conditions before pregnancy. After childbirth.

– This change may indicate calibration of brain circuits, similar to what is happening to all young people as they pass through puberty. Some of the changes we have noticed can also be a response to the high physiological requirements of pregnancy, showing how the brain can be adaptable – adds Laura Communion, a post -collector associate at the University of Pennsylvania and the lead author of the study.

In the future, researchers hope to examine how variations in these changes can help predict phenomena such as postpartum depression and as preeclampsia, a serious state of blood pressure that can develop during pregnancy and can affect the brain.