How childbirth biologically rejuvenates a woman's brain

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Scientists analyzed the structure of the brain of middle-aged women and found that it looks younger in those who have given birth than in those who have never had children. This is due to the fact that the protective mechanisms included in the body of the expectant mother operate throughout life. The research results are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

During pregnancy and the first weeks after childbirth, a woman's body undergoes serious changes, including the brain. Its plasticity increases sharply, a restructuring of neural connections is taking place, powerful adaptation mechanisms are activated, ensuring the health of the mother and offspring.

It is known, for example, that during gestation, the brain of pregnant women decreases, and then recovers within six months after childbirth.

In the scientific literature, it has been suggested more than once that neural changes that appear at the stage of pregnancy can go far beyond the postpartum period, continuing to have a protective effect on the woman's brain throughout her life, slowing down the processes of neurobiological aging.

A group of European scientists from the UK, Norway and the Netherlands decided to test this hypothesis. They studied the brain structure of 12,021 British women aged 54-55 (9568 of them gave birth at least once in their lives, and 2453 never gave birth). Using machine learning methods, the researchers created a neuroimaging algorithm that allows not only to detect traces of changes in the woman's brain that were inherent during pregnancy, but also to determine how many births there were.

The analysis showed that the brains of those giving birth looked younger. The biological age of their brain was 2-3 years younger than that of nulliparous peers. Moreover, the more often a woman gave birth, the greater was the gap between the real and biological age of her brain.

To exclude the influence of other factors, scientists tested the relationship between the biological age of the brain of women with their ethnicity, education, body mass index and age at first birth. No connection between these parameters, as well as the factor of genetic variation with the biological age of the brain, was found.

To explain how neural changes during and after pregnancy affect the subsequent aging of the woman's brain, scientists offer several hypotheses. This may be due to endocrine shifts. Hormones such as estradiol, progesterone, prolactin, oxytocin, and cortisol are known to affect brain activity, and fluctuations in these hormones can have long-term effects on brain health. It is possible that fetal (embryonic) cells that remain in a woman's body long after childbirth act on microchemical reactions in the brain.