Is ‘Mommy Brain’ Real or a Just a Myth?

Here’s how it begins. You look for your phone while you are on your phone. You walk into a room on a mission but by the time you reach the room you’ve forgotten the mission. You cannot shop for anything without a list. Sound familiar? You are either a certain age, or a purported victim of so-called mommy brain. Is ‘Mommy Brain’ Real or Just a Myth? But is “mommy brain” real? Do we really become more scatterbrained when we become mothers? Or is it just cultural bias that would have us believe that pregnancy and childcare impact a woman’s cognitive chops, long after baby is born? While there is some evidence to suggest that pregnancy affects the brain’s neuroplasticity, the jury is still out on whether these changes constitute a detriment. How does pregnancy change the brain? Pregnancy may change the brain through a process called neuroplasticity, which involves biological adaptations to new experiences. A 2016 landmark study in Nature Neuroscience found that even two years postpartum, women’s gray matter shrinks in areas involved in processing and responding to social signals. This reduction in brain matter concerning social cues, however, correlated with an increase in attachment to the mother’s infant. What some call loss may actually be a ratcheting up of efficiency. A new mother’s brain becomes better wired to respond to their infant’s needs or to detect threatening people in their environments. The study’s lead author put it this way: “Gray matter volume loss can also represent a beneficial process of maturation or specialization.” Herein lies the essence of the mommy brain debate: Is the memory impairment associated with child-rearing significant, or simply making way for what’s essential? Yes, you may forget someone’s name, but is this necessarily indicative of a decline in learning, reasoning and comprehension? […]

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