Pregnancy causes women to lose gray matter but mental processes not hurt: study

PARIS – Pregnancy causes "long-lasting" physical changes to a woman's brain, with significant, but seemingly beneficial, gray matter loss in parts of the crucial organ, a study said Monday. Some alterations lasted at least two years, they reported, but did not appear to erode memory or other mental processes. The changes "concern brain areas associated with functions necessary to manage the challenges of motherhood," study co-author Erika Barba-Muller of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) said in a statement. The radical hormone surges and physical changes of pregnancy have long been known and studied, but its effects on the brain have been little understood. The new study, published in Nature Neuroscience, claims to provide the first evidence "that pregnancy confers long-lasting changes in a woman's brain."