The mother's brain grows after childbirth

The brain is an organ endowed with a great capacity to mold itself according to the experiences lived. Becoming a mother is a very intense experience for a woman in which a complex neuronal biological process is involved thanks to which the mother's brain grows after childbirth.

Your brain reacts to the new situation. A change in the size and structure of the brain mass occurs causing certain areas of the central nervous system of the woman to develop shortly after the birth of her baby.

The regions of the brain that grow the most are those related to motivation (hypothalamus), the processing of reward and emotion (black substance and tonsil), the senses (the parietal lobe) and reasoning and judgment (prefrontal cortex).

This has been demonstrated by a study by the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States after scanning the brain of 19 women after giving birth. They noted that the volume of gray matter increased by a small but significant amount in various parts of the brain.

Likewise, mothers who talked about their babies with greater enthusiasm and were more involved in their new protective role were more likely to show greater brain development.

It is believed that the growth that the mother's brain experiences It is related to the increase in estrogen, oxytocin and prolactin that occurs after delivery. These hormones are essential to promote the emotional bond with the baby, and when started up they would cause structural changes in the brain mass.

There is no doubt that motherhood changes our lives completely. It produces changes at all levels, in our body, in our emotions, and now we know that also in our brain.