Ever wondered how Pregnancy changes women Brain?

From the moment a developing embryo implants in the womb, a woman’s body begins to undergo a slew of changes. Some are immediately apparent to the mom-to-be — a growing belly, fatigue, mood swings, and morning sickness, among others.

What may not be so obvious are the changes happening in her brain.

“There are a huge host of adaptations a woman’s body has to go through to allow for that fetus to grow,” says Liisa Galea, a neuroscientist at the University of British Columbia.

Galea and other researchers are beginning to understand that those adaptations include changes to the structure and function of the woman’s brain.

In 2016, a team of researchers from the Netherlands and Spain used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study what happens inside the brain during pregnancy. Comparing MRI images taken before women became pregnant with images taken after they had given birth, the researchers found pregnancy shrinks the brain’s gray matter, the pinkish-gray tissue containing the cell bodies and synapses of nerve cells. What’s more, the volume loss persisted for at least two years after childbirth.

Mothers are truly super heroes!