That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites - Pregnancy

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

In todays episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss whats going on in your brain when you're pregnant. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte. So this one comes from you, the listeners. We've had a lot of requests to talk about what's going on in a woman's brain when they're pregnant, the so-called baby brain. All right, let's dive right into it. Well, at an obvious level, when you get pregnant, there's a massive change in the amount of hormones that are released. And these lead to the mood swings that you experience, cravings, and all

of those things. So that's just your hormonal system going nuts. And on our next full episode of the podcast, I'm going to tackle glands and hormones and how that all works within the brain. So I'm not going to go too much into that here. I'm going to talk more about the brain itself. Now, this whole podcast is based on a couple of studies, the first of which was one of the first studies ever to take women that are pregnant and put them in an MRI scanner to look at what's going on in their brain. And what the researchers found was fascinating. Basically, the primary finding is that there was a reduction in gray matter of the brain. So what's gray matter? Well,

that's basically the part of the neuron that's doing all of the computations, right? So that is the part that allows you to think, if you will, and the loss of gray matter, you might go, what? That's not good.

And that loss was focalized. It was mostly in the frontal cortex and the temporal cortex. But you might think to yourself, oh my gosh, I'm losing gray matter. My brain is shrinking. Well, it is. It's only a little bit to be clear. But what's interesting is the researchers found that while the brain was getting a little bit smaller, it was actually getting more efficient. smaller, it was actually getting more efficient.

So the working theory from the research is that the brain was actually preparing itself to deal with an infant. And basically what it was doing was it was allowing moms to be better prepared to interpret newborn body language, the way they cry, the way they coo. So the brain shrinking was actually becoming more efficient and was helping moms prepare themselves for the birth of the child and being able to empathize and relate with it and what's interesting in a spinoff of this is that these changes actually allow mothers that have been pregnant to have deeper, stronger bonds with other people as well, not just the baby.

So there's a change there where all of a sudden the mother is able to make even better connections with other people. Now, not surprisingly, dads aren't affected. There's no changes in dad's brains when their wives are pregnant. And in terms of just how long this lasts for, basically they found that when women came back, these changes were still there even a couple years after the birth of the child. So there's a permanent change in the brain when you give birth to someone. So the emotional swings, the cravings, that's your hormonal system going wild,

but your brain actually shrinks, but it becomes more powerful. And the reason it does this is allow the mother to better empathize with and communicate with the child. All right, that's a neuroscience bite about pregnancy and the brain. Don't forget to check out the website, thatneuroscienceguy.com. Of course, send us ideas on threads or Twitter at thatneuroscienceguy, or you can email us, thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com. And of course, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. And if you haven't already, please subscribe.

My name is Olive Krigolson, and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.