ArticleScience advances2025
Linking birth experience and perinatal depression symptoms to neuroanatomical changes in hippocampus and amygdala.
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Maternal Neuroplasticity: Understanding Brain Changes with Perinatal Depression and Anxiety in Women.Current psychiatry reports · 2026Review
- Advances in Perinatal Depression: A Focus on Screening and Treatment.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Review
- The PMADS Project: A Longitudinal Multimodal Cohort Study to Understand Risk for Perinatal Mood and Anxiety Disorders.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- The vicious cycle of neuroinflammation and ferroptosis in depression: mechanisms and therapeutic targets.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
- Neurosteroids: a lifelong impact on brain health.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Review
- Hormonal and structural transformations in the caregiver's brain: Examining themes in parental neurobiology.AIMS neuroscience · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Childbirth is a life-changing event in a mother's life. While the transition to motherhood has recently been recognized as one of the most neuroplastic periods in adulthood, no study has yet explored whether the hippocampus and amygdala change during the peripartum in relation to childbirth experience and perinatal depression symptoms. In this longitudinal neuroimaging study, we assessed 88 first-time gestational mothers in late pregnancy and early postpartum and 30 nulliparous control women. We used optimized high-resolution MRI scans to quantify volumetric changes in the hippocampus and amygdala, along with their substructures. We found that increases in depression symptoms during the peripartum were positively correlated with changes in the right amygdala. A more challenging birth experience was associated with bilateral increases in hippocampal volume. These findings show that studying the neuroanatomical changes during the transition to motherhood can inform not only about adaptive processes but also about potential vulnerabilities, highlighting the importance of tracking perinatal experiences to enhance women's health.
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Registered trials
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