Pregnancy changes the brain – and we are only beginning to understand how and why

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Millions of women go through pregnancy every year, yet science has only just begun to look at what it does to the brain – the organ undergoing perhaps the most remarkable transformation. Over the past decade, a small group of scientists in Spain and the Netherlands has been mapping those changes in unprecedented detail.

The researchers scanned the brains of 127 first-time mothers five times: once before conception, twice during pregnancy, and again at one and six months after giving birth.