Don't Blame "Baby Brain"- Pregnancy Makes Women Smarter

A new study claims to debunk the accepted notion that pregnancy makes women forgetful- and says instead that they get smarter, post-pregnancy. One researcher described what he saw in the studied women as "a surge of memory and learning ability that makes women more vigilant and alert." So why is it so popular to argue that women's brains are getting smaller? For one, there may be some truth to the idea that your brain function is semi-impaired during the nine months of pregnancy- but not from "brain shrinkage." One Australian researcher, Helen Christensen, suggests that it comes down to sleep deprivation and suggestibility: "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 effects." Professor Christensen's study tested the same 2,500 women before, during and after their pregnancies and found that they performed the same throughout on memory and logic tests, and did just as well as the never-pregnant control group. Dr Craig Kinsley ran a similar study and found that giving birth might actually kick-start a surge of mental power. He claims that the hormones that women love to blame for forgetfulness and mood swings are actually causing brain cells to grow. His theory for this is that the hormones released during birth and breast-feeding are actually there to "super-charge" your brain to deal with the challenges of motherhood. According to studies done on rats and primates; "mothers become much braver, are up to five times faster at finding food and have better spatial awareness than those without offspring." The best part? It might be an irrevocable physical change, leaving you permanently smarter (and better at finding food, woo!) A quick search of "forgetful pregnant" brings up hundreds of pages reaffirming the popular belief that pregnancy makes you forgetful and impaired. Pregnancy makes you lots of things (giant and freakishly swollen like Violet Beauregarde, for one) but maybe now we can cross one of those handicaps off the list.

'Baby brain' is a myth - women's intelligence increases during motherhood, claims study [Daily Mail]

Study: Pregnant Women More Forgetful [Consumer Affairs]