Although we create pregnancy makes us clumsy and that motherhood is a tired stage with sleepless nights, it turns out that both states have a amazing benefit in our brain functioning.
"Many benefits seem to come from motherhood," say professors Craig Kinsley of Richmond University and Kelly Lambert of Randolph Macon College, both in Virginia.
During pregnancy, learning and memory capacity increase markedly and the size of some key brain areas is altered, with these changes persisting for decades.
Not only do they improve sensory abilities immediately after birth, but those women who have children after 40 are four times more likely to survive up to 100 years. Pregnancy is responsible for good mental health and longevity, since it improves the brain functioning of women just when they begin to perceive a loss of memory in middle age.
But that is not all. Hormonal fluctuations in pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding reshape the brain, increasing the size of neurons in some regions, making women more alert.
On the other hand (and this does not need a study to say so), raising a child is such a challenge that it stimulates brain activity. Having a baby is "a revolution for the brain," says Dr. Michael Merzenich of the University of California, San Francisco. The brain creates cells that proliferate the more they are used and the emotional experience of raising a child is the greatest stimulus of all.
Via | klip7.cl/blogsalud
