This Is What Happens to Your Brain During Pregnancy

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If you’ve ever been pregnant or known a pregnant person, you’ve probably heard of pregnancy brain. “Pregnancy brain” refers to the cognitive changes some people experience while carrying a baby that can include forgetfulness, absentmindedness, confusion, fatigue, and an inability to focus.

This unique struggle of pending motherhood has long been chalked up as a myth but new research shows that the brain goes through real, significant changes during pregnancy that have gone understudied and ignored for centuries.

Researchers have created one of the first comprehensive maps of how the brain changes throughout pregnancy in a study published in the Nature Neuroscience journal in September 2024. “There has been so much about the neurobiology of pregnancy that we don’t understand yet,” said senior study author Dr. Emily Jacobs, associate professor in the department of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. 

Dr. Elizabeth R. Chrastil, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, developed the study and underwent in vitro fertilization to use herself as the participant. The 38-year-old first-time mother was studied from three weeks before conception to two years after her child’s birth. Researchers conducted 26 MRI scans and blood tests on Chrastil, then compared them with brain changes observed in eight other participants who were not pregnant.

Nine weeks into the study, researchers found widespread decreases in gray matter volume and thickness of the cerebral cortex (gray matter is brain tissue that controls speech, thought, and memory). Researchers also found an increase in cerebrospinal fluid and white matter microstructure that produces hormones that may be the brain’s way of preparing to bond with the baby. Some of the changes to the brain remained for up to two years after the birth.

“This study is fundamental in laying the groundwork for future research by providing data that allows future research to explore in more detail and look at in relation to how we can support healthy brain changes in pregnancy in the mother,” Dr. Jodi Pawluski, a neuroscientist, therapist and author based in France, told CNN, adding that these mental, emotional, and cognitive changes during pregnancy, while frustrating, are normal and healthy.

Studies like this highlight the persistent gaps in research on maternal health and pregnancy risks. Black women bear the brunt of that medical ignorance. Black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy related issues than white women. There is still a great deal of data about what happens to women during and post pregnancy–from preeclampsia to post-partum depression– that is lacking in the medical field. This research into pregnancy brain and its real, lived effects on parents is an essential step to medical equality.

“It’s a byproduct of the fact that the biomedical sciences have historically ignored women’s health. It’s 2024, and this is the first glimpse we have at this fascinating neurobiological transition,” Jacobs said. “Our ignorance has consequences.”

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Pregnancy Brain Is Real! This Is What Happens to Your Brain During Pregnancy  was originally published on elev8.com