Giving Birth to a Baby Can Brighten You! - - New Study Findings

New mothers often grumble that their brain has turned into mush.

But having a baby may actually make you brighter, a study has found.

Research shows that a woman’s grey matter grows in the weeks and months after she has given birth.

And it’s the most doting mothers who experience the biggest burst of brain cells.

t is thought that the hormonal changes associated with having a baby ‘supercharge’ the brain, helping prepare women for the challenges ahead.

And the memory lapses that plague new mothers may be explained by a simpler cause – sleep deprivation.

The finding, from a small study published by the American Psychological Association, contradicts the long-held notion that motherhood addles a woman’s brain.

Neuroscientists from the respected Yale University in the U.S. scanned the brains of 19 new mothers in the weeks after they had given birth.

The results showed that the amount of grey matter – brain cells that crunch information – had increased by a small but significant amount by the time the women were three to four months into motherhood.

Such changes usually only occur after intense periods of learning or a brain injury or illness.

The areas that grew involve motivation, reasoning, judgement, the processing of emotions and feelings of satisfaction, and are key to the mother-child relationship.

Expansion in the brain’s ‘motivation area’, said the researchers, could lead to more nurturing, which would help babies survive and thrive physically, emotionally and cognitively.

The mothers who gushed most about their newborns tended to experience the biggest amounts of growth, the journal Behavioral Neuroscience reports.

It is unclear to what extent the changes are due to rises in hormones such as oestrogen and oxytocin that occur when a woman gives birth, and how much they are caused by chemical changes brought on by cuddling and playing with their babies.

Studies of adoptive mothers could help separate the two.

Siobhan Freegard, founder of the Netmums website, said that ‘supercharging’ made sense.

She added: ‘Nature has an amazing way of giving us things that we need. Having a baby is a momentous occasion, so it is not surprising the brain gets that little bit extra to equip us for the challenge.’

She suggested that any ‘baby brain’ memory lapses could be due to changing priorities, with the newborn being deemed more important than most other matters.

The results of the study echo research from last year which concluded that, contrary to popular belief, pregnancy does nothing to dim brainpower.

Professor Helen Christensen, of the Australian National University in Canberra, showed that women did as well on tests of memory and logic when pregnant as they had in previous years.

She said: ‘It really leaves the question open as to why women – and often their partners – think they have poor memories, when the best evidence we have is that they don’t.

‘Perhaps women notice minor lapses in mental ability and then attribute it to being pregnant because that is the most significant thing in their mind at the time.

‘Or sleep deprivation could mask the positive cognitive effect.’