Editor’s Note: Podcasts pursuing their lives with Dr. Sanjay GUPTA explore the medicine of life ‘s mysteries Big and Small. You can listen to the episode here.
Science has established that the brain is not static. It changes and adapts throughout our lives by response to life events in the process of being called. Nervousness.
Researchers find that this is especially true in the women’s brain, which is greatly remodeled in pregnancy and surrounding races.
All three transitions are frequent buttocks of popular culture jokes. A mother who can’t remember the place where the car is left in the refrigerator and the car is parked. And a hormonal middle -aged woman who can’t concentrate and can’t burn voluntarily.
But except for funny, these stereotypes are external expressions of large internal shifts, and many of them are associated with the impact of hormonal fluctuations on the brain.
The cognitive neuroscientist Laura Pritschet, a doctoral researcher at the Pennsylvania University, is fascinated by how female hormones, including estrogen and progesterone, affect the brain’s tissue and function.
PRITSCHET recently said that Dr. Sanjay GUPTA, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, recently chased PODCAST, “The reason I chose the field was because I was interested in the brain network, was interested in the brain network, and all of the brain could simply be able to have a personality.
“At the same time in a personal life, I was surrounded by menopause women who are talking about cognitive complaints and problems,” she said. “I thought we should connect these two things and understand it more.”
PRITSCHET volunteered as a “guinea pig” at graduate school, scanning the brain over two complete fertility cycles and drawing blood for 30 days to answer questions about how the hormone’s everyday fluctuations are related. Brain.
At this time, other researchers are studying what happens in the brain during pregnancy, Pritschet is looking at the brain before and after pregnancy. They found a lot of changes, but the researchers SnapshotThere was a lot of answers to many questions.
“When does the total recurrent volume decrease by 3-5%? PRITSCHET asked. “We have no big difference in calling this pervert.
“We know that the 40 -week pregnancy window leads to this physical adaptation to support the development of the fetus. We have increased plasma volume, immune function changes, metabolic rates, and oxygen consumption. ”She said.
To find out, Pritschet and her team traced a woman’s brain change using MRI and blood draws from pre -pregnancy and fertility to two years of postpartum. Their discovery was published in the journal. Natural neuroscience September.
You can listen to the entire episode here.
“We have seen a decrease in the amount of gray volume throughout the brain.” We saw the increase in the size of the protein microstructure and ventricles. “(Fast anatomy classes: Gray and white substances are a place where most brain thinking and processing occurs. Protein connects different brain regions by connecting different brain regions. It helps you communicate.)
Pritschet said, “The inflection point was born. This has been shown that a certain area of the brain has risen in the early postpartum of the brain. Others did not. ”
PRITSCHET says this “choreography dance between the main features of our brain” is a physical adaptation to increased blood flow and swelling that occurs with pregnancy.
In addition, change can be preparation for parenting, the next stage.
“This is the fine adjustment of the circuit.“ We know that pregnancy has a lot of behavioral adaptation in your life, new demands and new cognitive loads.
Pritschet said, “The idea is that there is this pruning or delicate relocation to create a specific network or to make the brain more efficient.
This theory is supported by the previous work. “The first vertex species that looked at the nerve anatomy of human women from prejudice to postpartum have found that the degree of change of gray volume (like this) is associated with various maternal behaviors (such as bonds).
“This is an area we need to do more and needs a lot of contexts,” she said. “But if this circuit is the basis of cognitive or behavioral process, if there is a fine adjustment, the more fine adjustment, the better the idea will be better. But it is much more complicated.”
wDoes the hat occur in the brain during pregnancy? Pritschet provides these three insights.
The body is an external sign of many inner upheavals.
PRITSCHET said in an e -mail, “Pregnancy is a variant in the life of a person who has a quick physiological adaptation to prepare for the mother.”
She often called the brain development of brain development that often occurs as an adult for women.
Less protein may not sound very positively, but there is a reason.
Pritschet said, “Despite what you can think about, this reduction is not bad and it will be really expected.” “This change can indicate the ‘fine adjustment’ of the brain circuit, unlike what happens to all young people when switching through puberty.”
This change can also be a response to the high physiological demands of pregnancy itself, she said.
These changes can affect future health and behavior.
Mapping these changes can open a door to understand other neurological and behavioral results, including postpartum depression, headache, migraine, epilepsy, stroke and parent behavior.
PRITSCHET said, “The neurological changes developed during pregnancy have a great influence on understanding the vulnerability of mental health disorders and individual differences in parent behavior.
She said she could even provide critical insights about how the brain changed during your life.
I hope this insight will help you better understand the changes in your brain during pregnancy. Listen to the entire episode here. And next week, the Chasing Life PODCAST new episode with us.
