Does pregnancy change the mother's brain? Here are all the transformations

Pregnancy profoundly transforms a woman's body: the belly grows, habits change, sleep patterns alter. But what happens to the brain? In recent years, scientific research has shown that the brain also undergoes real and measurable transformations during gestation, some of which last well beyond childbirth. These are not just passing moods, but structural changes that are visible on MRI scans. Understanding what happens to the brain during pregnancy helps to better understand this profound transformation in a woman's life.

Yes, and it is one of the most surprising discoveries in neuroscience in recent years. A landmark study published in 2017 in the journal Nature Neuroscience followed a group of women before and after their first pregnancy, comparing them with women who had not become pregnant and their partners. The researchers used MRI scans to measure the volume of different areas of the brain. The results showed a reduction in so-called 'grey matter' - the outermost, most active layer of the brain - in areas related to understanding other people's emotions and social life. These changes were still present and measurable two years after birth.

This may sound worrying, but scientists interpret it in a positive way: the brain 'refines', eliminating less useful connections to become more efficient, like when you prune a plant, and in a similar way to what happens during adolescence. No brain matter is lost in a negative way: the brain reorganises itself. Significantly, the women who showed the most pronounced changes also had a stronger attachment to their child, as measured by specific questionnaires on the quality of attachment. Research in this field is still open: the BeMother project, funded by the European Research Council and currently under way in Spain, is following hundreds of women before, during and after their first pregnancy precisely in order to answer further questions more precisely.

Yes, at least in part. Subsequent research, published in 2022 in Nature Communications by the same research group, analysed not only the structure of the brain but also how different areas communicate with each other at rest, the composition of the white matter and the levels of certain brain metabolites. The results confirmed that certain changes persist for years after birth. The areas related to the ability to recognise emotions and understand the views of others were still different from those of women who had never had children.

The researchers believe that these changes are functional: the mother's brain adapts to respond better to the infant's needs, becoming more 'tuned in' to the baby's signals: a cry, an expression, a gesture. However, it should be emphasised that the available studies mainly concern first pregnancies and relatively small samples: further research is needed to understand whether and how these changes vary with subsequent pregnancies.