Posted on 09/19/2024 3:42:11 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Pregnancy triggers vast changes in a woman's body — hormonal, cardiovascular, respiratory, gastrointestinal, urinary and more. And, as a new study reveals, the brain undergoes major changes too, some fleeting and others more enduring.
Researchers said on Monday (Sept 16) they have for the first time mapped the changes that unfold as a woman's brain reorganises in response to pregnancy, based on scans carried out 26 times starting three weeks before conception, through nine months of pregnancy and then two years postpartum.
The study documented a widespread decrease in the volume of cortical grey matter, the wrinkled area that comprises the brain's outermost layer, as well as an increase in the microstructural integrity of white matter located deeper in the brain. Both changes coincided with rising levels of the hormones oestradiol and progesterone.
Grey matter is comprised of the cell bodies of the brain nerve cells. White matter is made up of the bundles of axons — long, thin fibres — of the nerve cells that transmit signals in long-distance connections across the brain.
(Excerpt) Read more at asiaone.com ...
Not sure I’ve ever seen “woman’s brain” and “reorganized” in the same sentence before (a sexist would say) . . .
This seems like how nature intended. Of course the focus should turn to the baby once pregnant.
Study Shows How a Woman’s Brain Reorganizes into DEFCON 3 During Periods
there fixed it
That’s good. Us real men need to knock em’ up more and not wait for the Bill Clintons make them put on their IOU.
This woman is very old for a first pregnancy.
I don’t think that this study would necessarily present data that is typical for a mother of a more typical first pregnancy age of 16 to 22.
Dr Laura claimed on air that a mother’s brain shrinks 8% during pregnancy. She figured that was to prevent her from thinking too much about how something the size of a football will fit through a 5” opening.
16-22 is no longer the typical age of first birth.
“reorganises”
LOL. I’ll remember that one.
Is that why they want to kill their unborn child?
My guess is that the woman’s body redirects fat from the woman’s brain to that of the child.
The gray matter is mostly fat so evolutionarily it makes sense that that fat resource would be tapped during pregnancy to ensure the development of the child.
In a woman with adequate caloric and fat intake why it would still be tapped I have no idea other than millions of years of evolution where that was not usually the case.
In most of the world it is, if not earlier.
In most of human history it would be even younger.
Although most of this first children would not survive.
It was in most of history said that the first two children were for the crows.
My grandmother’s first, third and forth pregnancies were stillborn or died in infancy.
My wife’s brain reorganizes about every half hour or so - Usually the reorg has something to do with the way I walk or breath or stand still... : )
I like mine organized just as it is.
Women's emotions and critical thinking ebbs and flows like tides in life. Men.....not so much. Very large immovable objects that bore easily and make bad choices frequently.
Could the type of scan used make a difference? I would guess they used MRI..and not X-ray or radioactive material.
Now they gotta correlated scan info with behavioural changes...
“In 1800, the American birthrate was higher than the birthrate in any European nation. The typical American woman bore an average of 7 children. She had her first child around the age of 23 and proceeded to bear children at two-year intervals until her early 40s.”
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/topic_display.cfm?tcid=134#:~:text=In%201800%2C%20the%20American%20birthrate,intervals%20until%20her%20early%2040s.
So less intelligent and more emotionally aware?
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