Pregnancy involves radical hormone surges and biological adaptations. However, the effects of pregnancy on the human brain are virtually unknown. Here we show, using a prospective ('pre'-'post' ...pregnancy) study involving first-time mothers and fathers and nulliparous control groups, that pregnancy renders substantial changes in brain structure, primarily reductions in gray matter (GM) volume in regions subserving social cognition. The changes were selective for the mothers and highly consistent, correctly classifying all women as having undergone pregnancy or not in-between sessions. Interestingly, the volume reductions showed a substantial overlap with brain regions responding to the women's babies postpartum. Furthermore, the GM volume changes of pregnancy predicted measures of postpartum maternal attachment, suggestive of an adaptive process serving the transition into motherhood. Another follow-up session showed that the GM reductions endured for at least 2 years post-pregnancy. Our data provide the first evidence that pregnancy confers long-lasting changes in a woman's brain.
Mapping the impact of pregnancy on the human brain is essential for understanding the neurobiology of maternal caregiving. Recently, we found that pregnancy leads to a long‐lasting reduction in ...cerebral gray matter volume. However, the morphometric features behind the volumetric reductions remain unexplored. Furthermore, the similarity between these reductions and those occurring during adolescence, another hormonally similar transitional period of life, still needs to be investigated. Here, we used surface‐based methods to analyze the longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging data of a group of 25 first‐time mothers (before and after pregnancy) and compare them to those of a group of 25 female adolescents (during 2 years of pubertal development). For both first‐time mothers and adolescent girls, a monthly rate of volumetric reductions of 0.09 mm3 was observed. In both cases, these reductions were accompanied by decreases in cortical thickness, surface area, local gyrification index, sulcal depth, and sulcal length, as well as increases in sulcal width. In fact, the changes associated with pregnancy did not differ from those that characterize the transition during adolescence in any of these measures. Our findings are consistent with the notion that the brain morphometric changes associated with pregnancy and adolescence reflect similar hormonally primed biological processes.
Pregnancy and the postpartum period involve numerous physiological adaptations that enable the development and survival of the offspring. A distinct neural plasticity characterizes the female brain ...during this period, and dynamic structural and functional changes take place that accompany fundamental behavioral adaptations, stimulating the female to progress from an individual with self-directed needs to being responsible for the care of another life. While many animal studies detail these modifications, an emerging body of research reveals the existence of reproduction-related brain plasticity in human mothers too. Additionally, associations with aspects of maternal caregiving point to adaptive changes that benefit a woman’s transition to motherhood. However, the dynamic changes that affect a woman’s brain are not merely adaptive, and they likely confer a vulnerability for the development of mental disorders. Here, we review the changes in brain structure and function that a woman undergoes during the peripartum period, outlining associations between these neural alterations and different aspects of maternal care. We additionally discuss peripartum mood disorders and postpartum psychosis, and review the neuroimaging studies that investigate the neural bases of these conditions.
•Pregnancy renders anatomical reductions in the human ventral striatum (VStr).•VStr decreases are associated with stronger responses to offspring cues in the VStr.•Pregnancy may adaptively tune the ...reward circuit to promote offspring responsivity.
In mothers, offspring cues are associated with a powerful reinforcing value that motivates maternal care. Animal studies show that this is mediated by dopamine release into the nucleus accumbens, a core component of the brain’s reward system located in the ventral striatum (VStr). The VStr is also known to respond to infant signals in human mothers. However, it is unknown whether pregnancy modifies the anatomy or functionality of this structure, and whether such modifications underlie its strong reactivity to offspring cues. Therefore, we analyzed structural and functional neuroimaging data from a unique pre-conception prospective cohort study involving first-time mothers investigated before and after their pregnancy as well as nulliparous control women scanned at similar time intervals. First, we delineated the anatomy of the VStr in each subject’s neuroanatomical space and examined whether there are volumetric changes in this structure across sessions. Then, we tested if these changes could predict the mothers’ brain responses to visual stimuli of their infants. We found decreases in the right VStr and a trend for left VStr reductions in the women who were pregnant between sessions compared to the women who were not. Furthermore, VStr volume reductions across pregnancy were associated with infant-related VStr responses in the postpartum period, with stronger volume decreases predicting stronger functional activation to offspring cues. These findings provide the first indications that the transition to motherhood renders anatomical adaptations in the VStr that promote the strong responsiveness of a mother’s reward circuit to cues of her infant.
Neuroimaging researchers commonly assume that the brain of a mother is comparable to that of a nulliparous woman. However, pregnancy leads to pronounced gray matter volume reductions in the mother's ...brain, which have been associated with maternal attachment towards the baby. Beyond two years postpartum, no study has explored whether these brain changes are maintained or instead return to pre-pregnancy levels. The present study tested whether gray matter volume reductions detected in primiparous women are still present six years after parturition. Using data from a unique, prospective neuroimaging study, we compared the gray matter volume of 25 primiparous and 22 nulliparous women across three sessions: before conception (
= 25/22), during the first months of postpartum (
= 25/21), and at six years after parturition (
= 7/5). We found that most of the pregnancy-induced gray matter volume reductions persist six years after parturition (classifying women as having been pregnant or not with 91.67% of total accuracy). We also found that brain changes at six years postpartum are associated with measures of mother-to-infant attachment. These findings open the possibility that pregnancy-induced brain changes are permanent and encourage neuroimaging studies to routinely include pregnancy-related information as a relevant demographic variable.
Animal studies have shown that pregnancy is associated with neural adaptations that promote maternal care. The hypothalamus represents a central structure of the mammalian maternal brain and hormonal ...priming of specific hypothalamic nuclei plays a key role in the induction and expression of maternal behavior. In humans, we have previously demonstrated that becoming a mother involves changes in grey matter anatomy, primarily in association areas of the cerebral cortex. In the current study, we investigated whether pregnancy renders anatomical changes in the hypothalamus. Using an advanced delineation technique, five hypothalamic substructures were defined in longitudinal MRI scans of 107 women extracted from two prospective pre-conception cohort studies, including 50 women who were scanned before and after pregnancy and 57 nulliparous control women scanned at a similar time interval. We showed that becoming a mother is associated with volume reductions in the anterior-superior, superior tuberal and posterior hypothalamus. In addition, these structural changes related to hormonal levels during pregnancy and specific aspects of self-reported maternal behavior in late pregnancy, including maternal-fetal attachment and nesting behavior. These findings show that pregnancy leads to changes in hypothalamic anatomy and suggest that these contribute to the development of maternal behavior in humans, supporting the conservation of key aspects of maternal brain circuitry and their role in maternal behavior across species.
•Hypothalamic substructures were defined in longitudinal MRI scans of 107 women.•50 women were scanned before and after pregnancy, and 57 controls at same interval.•Volumetric decreases occur across pregnancy in hypothalamic subregions in humans.•Hypothalamic volume changes relate to prenatal maternal behavior.
Resumen: Sabemos poco sobre los dispositivos asistenciales de salud mental que tratan mediante psicoterapia psicoanalítica en España. Presentamos los resultados de un estudio epidemiológico que ...recoge la información proporcionada por 97 psicoterapeutas con orientación psicoanalítica pertenecientes a la Federación Española de Asociaciones de Psicoterapeutas (FEAP). Se describen los perfiles de los terapeutas, de los pacientes atendidos (n=1862) y de sus tratamientos. Los resultados son discutidos a la luz de otros estudios y representan un 7% de la actividad psicoanalítica de FEAP
Cover Image Carmona, Susanna; Martínez‐García, Magdalena; Paternina‐Die, María ...
Human brain mapping,
04/2019, Letnik:
40, Številka:
7
Journal Article
Recenzirano
COVER ILLUSTRATION
This image aims to reflect the parallelism that exists between the morphometric brain changes that occur during pregnancy and those that take place during adolescence. The image ...has no copyright and the neurons were inspired in one of the Ramon y Cajal drawings.
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