Publisher’s note: The Podcast Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta explores medical science behind some of the mysteries of large and small life. You can listen to episodes here.
Science has established quite well that the brain is not static; It changes and adapts throughout our lives in response to life events in a process called neuroplasticity.
Researchers discover that this is particularly true for female brains, which are renovated considerably during the three PS: puberty (just like the brain of adolescent males), pregnancy and perimenopause.
The three transitions are a target of pop culture jokes: the teenage girl sulking and at risk that only wants to be with friends; The future dispersed mother who leaves her mobile phone in the refrigerator and does not remember where she parked the car; And the middle -aged hormonal woman who cannot concentrate and combustion spontaneously with hot flashes.
But far from being laughable, these behavioral stereotypes are the external manifestations of large internal shifts, many of which are linked to the effects of fluctuating hormones on the brain.
The cognitive neuroscientist Laura Pritschet, a postdoctoral purse of the psychiatric department of the University of Pennsylvania, is fascinated by the way in which female hormones, including estrogens and progesterone, affect the organization and functioning of the brain.
“The reason for which I chose this area is because I was a grass neuroscientist as the first cycle, interested in brain networks and obsessed with the complexity of everything in the brain to allow us to have a personality or to remember things,” said Pritschet recently, the chief medical correspondent of CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, on his life in podcast.
“At the same time in my personal life, I was surrounded by menopausal women who were talking about their cognitive complaints and their attention problems,” she said. “I thought we have to connect these two together and understand that more.”
Conchet even volunteered as a “guinea pig” during higher studies, having his brain scan and taken for 30 days, through two complete reproduction cycles (both on contraceptive pills), to start answering the question of how the daily fluctuations of hormones are linked to daily changes in the brain.
At that time, other researchers studied what was going on in the brain during pregnancy, said Pritschet, looking at the brain before and after gestation. They found many changes, but because studies have adopted an approach to snapshots, many questions remained unanswered.
“If there is a decrease of 3 to 5% of the total volume of gray matter, when it happens (during pregnancy), and how does that happen?” Asked Pritschet. “We miss huge gaps in what we call this metamorphosis.
“”We know that the 40-week gestational window leads to these body adaptations to support the development of the fetus: we have increased the volume of plasma, the change in immune function, the metabolic rate, oxygen consumption, “she said.” What is this trajectory like gestation looks like? “”
To find out, Pritschet and his team followed brain changes in a woman, using MRI and blood samples, pre-conception and fertility treatment throughout her pregnancy at two years postpartum. Their results were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience in September.
You can listen to the full episode here.
“We have seen this reduction in the volume of gray matter almost all over the brain,” said Pritschet. “We have seen an increase in the microstructure of the white substance and the size of the ventricle.” (Quick lesson in anatomy: the brain is made up of gray and white matter. Gray matter is the place where most of the thought and brain treatment takes place. The white matter helps connect the different areas of the brain, allowing them to communicate with each other.)
“The inflection point has been birth,” said Pritschet. “We have seen that these reductions persisted in postpartum, with a slight recovery, which means that certain areas of the brain showed this increase in the volume of gray matter at the start of postpartum. Others did not do so.”
Conchet said that this “choreographed dance between the main characteristics of our brain” is in an regard a physical adaptation to the increase in blood flow and swelling that comes with pregnancy.
In addition, changes can also be a preparation for the next step: parenting.
“It is a fine adjustment of the circuits,” she explained. “We know that pregnancy is the contribution to this time of your life where there is a lot of behavioral adaptation that must occur, and new cognitive requirements and a new cognitive charge.
“And therefore the idea here is that there is this pruning or this delicate recheeing to make certain networks or to make communication in the brain more effective to respond to the requests that will have to occur,” said Pritschet.
This theory is supported by previous work. “The first articles of Pinacle which came out by looking at neuroanatomy in human women, from preconception to postpartum, revealed that the degree of change in the volume of gray matter-this kind of reduction-was correlated with various … maternal behaviors (like the link). Again, that is the whole correlation,” she said.
“This is an area on which we have to do much more research, and it needs a lot of context,” she said. “But you can expect if there is fine adjustment in these circuits that underlie the cognitive or behavioral process, the finest it undergoes, the best performances you are going to have. It is the idea – but it is so much more complicated than that.”
WThe hat arrives at the brain during pregnancy? Pritschet offers these three ideas.
The body is the outside sign of many interior upheavals.
“Pregnancy is a transformative period in the life of a person where the body undergoes rapid physiological adaptations to prepare for maternity,” said Pritschet by e-mail. “But pregnancy does not only transform the body – it also triggers a deep change in the brain and reflects another critical period of brain development.”
She called this reshaping of an often neglected brain development period which takes place well in the adulthood of a woman.
Less gray matter may not seem very positive, but this happens for a reason.
“Despite what one might think, these discounts are not a bad thing, and in fact, are to be expected,” said Pritschet, noting that some of the losses are ultimately found. “This change could indicate a” fine setting “of brain circuits, a bit like what happens to all young adults as they pass through puberty and their brain becomes more specialized.”
These changes could also be a response to the high physiological requirements of pregnancy itself, she said, “showing how adaptive the brain can be.”
These changes could affect future health and behavior
The mapping of these changes could open the door to the understanding of a range of other neurological and behavioral results, including postpartum depression, headache, migraines, epilepsy, stroke and parental behaviors.
“The neuroanatomical changes that take place during (pregnancy) have large implications for understanding the vulnerability to mental health disorders … and individual differences in parental behavior,” said Pritschet.
This can even provide a critical overview of how the brain changes during a lifespan, she said.
We hope that these ideas will help you better understand the brain changes that occur during pregnancy. Listen to the full episode here. And join us next week for a new episode of the Podcast Chasing Life.
