Motherhood: if your whole life changes, how could the brain not?
By Alejandro Albarrán
Motherhood is a profoundly life-changing experience. Pregnancy not only alters daily routines and responsibilities, it also transforms the body in remarkable ways. Organs shift to make room for a baby and hormones fluctuate dramatically. Yet, these internal rearrangements are only part of the story. The brain changes too. To understand how the brain adapts to motherhood, I spoke with neuroscientist Susana Carmona, author of the book “Neuromaternal” and a leading researcher in the field.
Not so long ago, in 2017, scientists from Carmona’s research group and their collaborators discovered that pregnancy leads to long-lasting structural changes in the maternal brain. In fact, they found that they were able to tell whether a woman had been pregnant by looking at brain scans (Hoekzema et al., 2017). You read that right. 140 million births happen every year globally (WHO, 2025). Still, we had missed that. This is no coincidence: until recently, women’s health was an overlooked area in research. Beyond just the surprise of a discovery that was made far too late, studying the maternal brain holds enormous potential. It could deepen our understanding of the link between motherhood and mental well-being, and provide new insights into conditions such as postpartum depression.
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“It is not necessary for your brain to change in order to bond with your baby, nor is it enough for your brain to change in order to do so.” Susana Carmona, neuroscientist
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Using magnetic resonance imaging, Carmona and Oscar Vilarroya’s teams identified a 5% decrease in volume in the cortical gray matter, the outer layer of the brain that processes information. Such variations had never before been detected in healthy adults. But this is nothing to worry about, reductions in brain volume do not necessarily mean damage or degeneration, they can reflect adaptability. In addition, these changes are also not permanent: gray matter volume begins to recover during the postpartum period. More intriguingly, they found those changes happened in the circuits that process information related to social cognition and empathy, among others. The most surprising part? The team also found that reductions in gray matter volume were associated with stronger maternal bonding, suggesting that these structural changes may reflect adaptations that support motherhood (Hoekzema et al., 2017; Servin-Barthet et al., 2025).
However, evidence from human studies remains too scarce to draw firm conclusions. As Susana points out, “it is not necessary for your brain to change in order to bond with your baby, nor is it enough for your brain to change in order to do so.” Findings in humans appear broadly consistent with what scientists have observed in mice, but many pieces of the puzzle are still missing. In our conversation, Carmona explains that “we do know that the strength of the bond with the baby seems to depend on the mother’s mental well-being. In other words, the more the brain changes, the better the mother feels, and the easier it is for her to bond”.
But how exactly do these changes happen? Is it due to the hormones of pregnancy? Or is it due to the experience of looking after a baby that reshapes the brain? Research suggests that the brain changes associated with pregnancy are quite unique and different from those observed in fathers, whose brains also adapt to parenthood due to experience but in more subtle ways (Paternina-Die et al., 2020).
To disentangle the roles of biology and experience, Susana’s team compared first-time mothers with women who didn’t have children and with non-gestating mothers (e.g., lesbian couples). Here, they discovered that reductions in gray matter volume correlated with fluctuations in estrogen levels (Servin-Barthet et al., 2025). Still, such a transformative moment cannot be explained by biology alone. As Susana explains, “pregnancy hormones facilitate or accelerate the process, but they do not determine it. We could say hormones make the brain more malleable, like wet clay ready to be molded. But it is experience and everyday contact with the baby that end up reshaping the brain”.
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“Pregnancy hormones facilitate or accelerate the process, but they do not determine it. We could say hormones make the brain more malleable” Susana Carmona, neuroscientist
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However, the intuition that pregnancy affects the brain is not entirely new. Decades ago, the term “mommy brain” became popular to describe the forgetfulness or struggles to concentrate that some women reported experiencing during and after pregnancy. The reality, however, is far more nuanced. Today, scientists consider this term as unfair and overly simplistic (McCormack et al., 2023). Research suggests that certain cognitive changes may occur, but only within a very specific period: from the second or third trimester of pregnancy to the first year postpartum (Younis et al., 2025). On a biological level, pregnancy places substantial metabolic demands on the body. Added to this, the lack of sleep mothers experience naturally impacts cognitive functions. From a psychological perspective, humans have limited attentional capacities, and during early motherhood, these resources are often reoriented toward responding to the baby’s needs. Therefore, mothers are expected to work as always while having part of their efforts put on the baby (Orchard et al., 2023). Finally, from a social standpoint, the “mommy brain” narrative could be affecting women’s subjective perception, making them more likely to attribute everyday lapses (ones anyone might experience) to pregnancy (McCormack, et al., 2023).
In any case, if cognitive changes do occur during this period, Susana believes they should be acknowledged and addressed. “It’s important that we validate this feeling,” she says, “because if we can do something to address it, we should look into it to support mothers’ cognitive and emotional well-being.” However, there’s one more twist: in the long term, cognitive functions not only recover completely, but mothers actually seem to outperform women without children on cognitive tests and their brains also appear biologically younger (de Lange et al., 2019; Orchard et al., 2023).
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Ultimately, the purpose of this research is not only to understand motherhood, but to make it gentler for those living it.
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Still, like any deep transformation, motherhood comes with its own vulnerabilities, and mental health is one of them. Nearly one out of five mothers experience perinatal depression (Wang et al., 2021), a stigmatized issue that doctors used to treat as a standard depression, ignoring its unique context. Luckily, in the last two years, U.S. and European authorities have approved the first drug specifically targeting perinatal depression. This drug, zurzuvae, is actually a synthetic molecule derived from progesterone, a hormone whose levels abruptly drop at birth, which “again hints towards this close relation between the endocrine system and the brain,” Carmona suggests.
In their latest publication, Carmona’s group found that depressive symptoms during and after pregnancy correlated with changes in the size of the amygdala, a brain region well known for processing emotions. At the same time, more challenging birth experiences (such as obstetric violence, health complications, etc.) were associated with changes in the hippocampus, a region involved in memory (Ballesteros et al., 2025). For Susana, the next goal is “to be able to predict and prevent perinatal depression”. However, for that, scientists still need to define what are the “normal” brain changes during motherhood, in order to identify deviations that could underlie mental health conditions. Once that is achieved, Susana foresees a future where “artificial intelligence integrates brain scan data, biomarkers, clinical history and socioeconomic status to predict the risk for mental health pathologies and, in that way, provide better support to these women”. Ultimately, the purpose of this research is not only to understand motherhood, but to make it gentler for those living it.
Behind every data point there is a mother navigating exhaustion, joy, fear, and change. In this context, these findings are more than just scientific curiosities: they could guide practical strategies to support maternal well-being. By identifying critical periods when mothers may be most vulnerable or most receptive to support, interventions could be better timed and more effective. In fact, beyond individual care, this knowledge could inform public policies regarding maternity leave or broader institutional support to protect mothers (Martínez-García et al., 2024). However, as Susana clarifies, “while neuroscience offers valuable insights, we already know enough to take meaningful steps to support mothers today”.
What would you like to read about next? Let us know here!
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Written by Alejandro Albarrán
Illustrated by Isabella Myers-Tasevoli
Edited by Sneha Mathur, Dhruv Mehrotra, and Nicole Less
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Sources
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