Women Grow Bigger Brains after Giving Birth
Photo courtesy of Flickr.com user Capt Piper
If it wasn’t for my friend Alyson Spindell, you wouldn’t be reading these words right now, since she was the person who about a year ago recommended that I start this blog!
So, Jewish moms, all together now, “THANK YOU ALYSON!”
And thanks again to Alyson. She just sent me this article that really warms a mother’s heart. I like this new research so much better than that old “postpartum brain shrinking” research. That was SUCH a downer.
by Debra Huso of AOLHealth.com
“Those of us who have been through the journey of childbirth and early motherhood often believe the experience shrinks our brains.
Lack of sleep and overwhelming new responsibilities seem to leave us forgetful, scatter-brained and sometimes just plain stupid. But a new study suggests that new mothers’ brains may actually grow in the postpartum period, leaving us smarter than we were before pregnancy.
The study, led by Dr. Pilyoung Kim a neuroscientist with the National Institute of Mental Health, indicates that mothering is not so much an instinctive response as a process requiring brain building. Kim and her team also found that mothers who have the warmest and most positive interactions with their babies also exhibited the greatest brain growth in the areas of emotional processing, sensory integration, reasoning and judgment…
Dr. Craig Kinsley, professor of psychology at the University of Richmond explains, “The feedback a mother receives from a baby is an enormous amount of stimuli. The mother is responding to sensory cues, so the baby is acting like an enriched environment.”
Kim’s study followed just 19 women, all of them in their early 30s and college-educated, so more research is needed to draw any substantial conclusions. But Kinsley is excited. “I think it’s a very interesting first step,” he added.
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Oh, how encouraging! Thanks for sharing!!! I’ve been talking about my ‘baby brain’ for too long now….