ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2022
The expectant brain-pregnancy leads to changes in brain morphology in the early postpartum period.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Maternal brain alterations based on neurotransmitter and hormone receptor distributions over six months postpartum.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- The paternal brain: longitudinal insights into structural and functional plasticity and attachment over 24 weeks postpartum.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- The effects of a second pregnancy on women's brain structure and function.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Dynamic modulation of the blood-brain barrier in the healthy brain.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2025Review
- Multiple Psychiatric Traits Enriched for Brain Tissues in the Early Postpartum Period.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- The Molecular and Cellular Basis of Physiological Changes in Pregnancy and Its Implications in Neurologic and Ophthalmic Pathologies.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Linking birth experience and perinatal depression symptoms to neuroanatomical changes in hippocampus and amygdala.Science advances · 2025Article
- Pregnancy entails a U-shaped trajectory in human brain structure linked to hormones and maternal attachment.Nature communications · 2025Article
- From Pregnancy to Postpartum: The Dynamic Reorganization of the Maternal Brain.Neuroscience insights · 2025Article
- Neural emotion regulation during pregnancy: An fMRI study investigating a transdiagnostic mental health factor in healthy first-time pregnant women.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Longitudinal neuroanatomical increases from early to one-year postpartum.Brain structure & function · 2024Article
- Enhancing brain health in the Global South through sex and gender lens.Nature. Mental health · 2024Article
- Temporal dissociation between local and global functional adaptations of the maternal brain to childbirth: a longitudinal assessment.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2024Article
- Review
- Time-sensitive changes in the maternal brain and their influence on mother-child attachment.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Women's neuroplasticity during gestation, childbirth and postpartum.Nature neuroscience · 2024Article
- Effects of reproductive experience on cost-benefit decision making in female rats.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There is growing evidence that pregnancy may have a significant impact on the maternal brain, causing changes in its structure. To investigate the patterns of these changes, we compared nulliparous women (n = 40) with a group of primiparous women (n = 40) and multiparous mothers (n = 37) within 1-4 days postpartum, using voxel-based and surface-based morphometry (SBM). Compared with the nulliparous women, the young mothers showed decreases in gray matter volume in the bilateral hippocampus/amygdala, the orbitofrontal/subgenual prefrontal area, the right superior temporal gyrus and insula, and the cerebellum. These pregnancy-related changes in brain structure did not predict the quality of mother-infant attachment at either 3 or 12 weeks postpartum nor were they more pronounced among the multiparous women. SBM analyses showed significant cortical thinning especially in the frontal and parietal cortices, with the parietal cortical thinning likely potentiated by multiple pregnancies. We conclude that, compared with the brain of nulliparous women, the maternal brain shows widespread morphological changes shortly after childbirth. Also, the experience of pregnancy alone may not be the underlying cause of the adaptations for mothering. As regards the exact biological function of the changes in brain morphology, longitudinal research will be needed to draw any definitive conclusions.
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