Forget it: 'Baby brain' a myth

Pregnant women, doctors and midwives should stop blaming memory lapses on their growing babies, according to researchers from the Australian National University.

It is a popular belief that pregnancy and motherhood affects a woman's memory, causing them to become more forgetful and absentminded. But research published in the February issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry finds no evidence that pregnancy or motherhood affects women's brain power.

The research team, led by Professor Helen Christensen of the Centre for Mental Health Research at ANU, recruited 1,241 women aged 20–24 and assessed their cognitive functioning. Four areas of cognition were assessed: cognitive speed, working memory, and immediate and delayed recall. The group of women were followed up at four-year intervals in 2003 and 2007 and given the same cognitive tests.

The researchers found no significant differences in cognitive change for those women who were pregnant during the assessments and those who were not. In addition, there were no significant differences between those women who had become mothers and those who had not. This led them to conclude that neither pregnancy nor motherhood have a detrimental effect on women's cognitive capacity – a finding that directly contradicts previous studies.

The researchers suggest that previous studies may be biased, either because they recruited women who were already anxious about the effect of pregnancy on their memory, or who were more depressed or sleep deprived. Additionally, this study recruited women prior to pregnancy, so cognitive function had already been tested before they became parents or mothers.

"Not so long ago, pregnancy was 'confinement' and motherhood meant the end of career aspirations. Our results show that mothers are the intellectual equal of their contemporaries," said Professor Christensen.

"Women and their partners need to be less automatic in their willingness to attribute common memory lapses to a growing or new baby. And obstetricians, family doctors and midwives may need to use the findings from this study to promote the fact that ‘placenta brain' is not inevitable.

Professor Christensen added that mothers are primed to look out for signs of 'baby brain': "Part of the problem is that pregnancy manuals tell women they are likely to experience memory and concentration problems, so women and their partners are primed to attribute any memory lapse to the ‘hard to miss' physical sign of pregnancy," she said.

(Source: Australian National University: British Journal of Psychiatry: February 2010)

Article Date: 9/2/2010

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Article Comments

Comment from: Cowboy | 2/9/2010 5:14:14 PM
Selected tests give selected results. Besides to obtain a true statistical data analysis you 15000 subjects.

Comment from: labrat | 2/10/2010 10:30:58 AM
this is not good news for women. what excuse will my wife use now for being doughey? (mind you i was suspicious when she didn't get any smarter after the birth)

Comment from: docmom | 2/12/2010 4:33:43 PM
Having had experienced "mom brain" myself twice, I never believed that my actual cognitive abilities were impaired (the premise of this study) but rather that there was such a huge amount of new information and emotional adjustment that needed to be incorporated into my brain and my life that it became easier to forget things that previously I did not have to pay much attention to (e.g. where my car was parked). During a pregnancy your body and your mind are undergoing a transformation into becoming a parent. This is mental work whether you realize it or not. It is new work for your brain, meaning that there is not as much energy for all the other processing your brain has to do. Then the baby comes, and any parent knows that you are then thinking about a million things at once trying to keep this new person alive and well. This task is far more important than even things like paying bills, remembering a phone number, an acquaintance's name, etc. and hence, we forget them. As once adjusts to being a parent and as the child grows and becomes more independent, there is then more time to think about those little details that previously fell through the cracks. The study does not measure this, or take it into account

Comment from: Leeper05 | 2/17/2010 1:59:48 AM
This study may have shown that women don't actually become less intelligent when they are pregnant, but I think we already knew that. Of course we can still perform all our necessary tasks home related or job related. But as a women who has been pregnant twice I will say with absolute certainty that you have a lot on your mind and yes sometimes you forget a few things or are not quite on your game I think that is due to everything that is going on in your mind and body! So lets not say that pregnancy brain is a myth. It's a reality to every pregnant women I've known.

Comment from: Chris | 2/17/2010 5:35:59 AM
I thought the problem wasn't "mommy brain", but sleep deprivation. I've noticed my cognitive capabilities and memory specifically is affected whenever I don't get enough sleep. This happens during pregnancy, particularly during the third trimester. Obviously, after the baby arrives, the sleep deprivation continues.

Comment from: Christina | 2/18/2010 5:20:56 AM
I was extremely forgetful while I was pregnant with my first child. I was so organized at work before I was pregnant, and did above and beyond what was needed of me at work. After I was pregnant I would forget to bring important papers in, I forgot so much stuff! I ended up needing a planner that I wrote in daily to not forget things. Later in my pregnancy I was reading one of my pregnancy books and discovered that there was something called "baby brain." I had never even heard of it, but it explained a lot of why I was feeling the way I was. I completely disagree with this study, as would almost any woman you ask that has been pregnant before.