ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Population-based neuroimaging reveals traces of childbirth in the maternal brain.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
88 citing papers in PubMed, 159 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neural circuits for mammalian parental behaviour.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Early Adulthood Signatures of Motherhood in Brain Aging.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Article
- Maternal brain alterations based on neurotransmitter and hormone receptor distributions over six months postpartum.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- superLPNet: a super lightweight parameter deep learning model for brain age estimation from structural MRI.Magma (New York, N.Y.) · 2026Article
- Reproductive history differentially shapes the neural response of middle-aged hAPOEɛ4 female rats to estradiol therapy after a metabolic challenge.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Aging of Nonhuman Primate Eyes Is Sexually Dimorphic.Investigative ophthalmology & visual science · 2026Article
- Traces of Parenthood but Not Pregnancy Loss in UK Biobank Structural Brain MRI Data.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- The effects of a second pregnancy on women's brain structure and function.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Pregnancy and breastfeeding are associated with less later-life cognitive decline in a longitudinal, prospective cohort.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Oxytocin varies across the life course in a sex-specific way in a human subsistence population.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- No causal links between estradiol and female's brain and mental health using Mendelian randomization.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Neuroanatomical features reveal accelerated brain age in alcohol use disorder.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- Cardiac remodelling, recognition memory deficits and accelerated ageing in a rat model of gestational diabetes.Diabetologia · 2025Article
- Understanding the Intersection Between Hormonal Dynamics and Brain Plasticity in Alzheimer's Disease: A Narrative Review for Implementing New Therapeutic Strategies.Health science reports · 2025Review
- Persistent dopamine-dependent remodeling of the neural transcriptome in response to pregnancy and postpartum.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Caregiving is associated with lower brain age in humans.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Article
- Sex differences in age-associated neurological diseases-A roadmap for reliable and high-yield research.Science advances · 2025Review
- Protective role of parenthood on age-related brain function in mid- to late-life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Maternal brain adaptations have been found across pregnancy and postpartum, but little is known about the long-term effects of parity on the maternal brain. Using neuroimaging and machine learning, we investigated structural brain characteristics in 12,021 middle-aged women from the UK Biobank, demonstrating that parous women showed less evidence of brain aging compared to their nulliparous peers. The relationship between childbirths and a "younger-looking" brain could not be explained by common genetic variation or relevant confounders. Although prospective longitudinal studies are needed, the results suggest that parity may involve neural changes that could influence women's brain aging later in life.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.