Pregnancy leaves its mark on the brain 2026

Mother superpowers! The brain is the only organ that never stops forming. Everything we live or do leaves its mark on it, thus forging the character of each person and their abilities. Pregnancy also affects you. The report “Maternal-child communication: attachment bond” prepared by experts from the University of Navarra talks about this.

The director of the work and professor of Biochemistry Natalia López Moratalla explains to us how the mother's brain is prepared to take care of the child she carries inside her.

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In the last months of pregnancy our brain becomes more empathetic

It has been proven that the brain decreases in size by up to 7% in the last months of pregnancy, but not because it works at a lower performance and that translates into a loss of neurons. "What happens is that the neural endings come together when certain areas work more, those that manage 'the social brain', and that process the relationship with others: emotions, empathy, attitudes...", comments Dr. Moratalla.

Neuroimaging techniques record how areas of the cognitive-affective reward system are activated and those involved in negative judgment are silenced. “Hence, a mother is not able to recognize her child's defects and only highlights his good qualities,” he adds.

Cristina Silvente, perinatal psychologist, reinforces this idea by explaining that during pregnancy the center of attention changes. "Now everything revolves around the baby and the rest seems to be secondary. In fact, although it may seem paradoxical, some authors consider that the distractions that are usually attributed to pregnancy are precisely proof of a woman's greater capacity for concentration, who now pays more attention to what she does or fails to do and magnifies the importance of the distraction."

Pulitzer-winning American Katherine Ellison reaches the same conclusion in “Mom's Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter,” where she asserts that the stigma of mental dullness associated with motherhood is unfair and false.

Both pregnancy and motherhood are very beneficial stages for brain functioning: sensory abilities improve after childbirth and the size of neurons increases in some regions of the brain so that the woman is more alert. Raising a child is a great encouragement.

Hormonal issue

As with many of the physical changes during pregnancy, the main culprits of this psychological swing are also hormones.

In the first months, the ovaries produce between 10 and 100 times more progesterone, which cuts off the production of cortisol, a stress trigger that could damage the fetus's organs.

It also increases the production of oxytocin, which promotes trusting relationships with others. It is stored in the brain and begins to be released from the fifth month of gestation thanks to physical contact (from the moment the mother notices the fetus kicking), with childbirth (to reduce pain naturally) and with breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact with the baby, thus promoting the mother-child attachment bond.

Alert senses

The senses are sharpened with motherhood, to be able to be more attentive to the children. Smell and hearing become more refined: mothers usually recognize their baby's cries among many others.

It also increases visual capacity, in order to protect the child from potential dangers.

But, without a doubt, it is the part of the cerebral cortex dedicated to touch that undergoes the greatest transformation. When a mother touches a baby and it touches her, she receives very subtle but very powerful information about what her child is like, what she feels, and what her relationship with her child is like. And this has an effect at the brain level. What's more, these changes begin to be perceived during pregnancy, every time you feel the movements of the fetus, you touch your belly and talk to it, transmitting your love.

Being a mother or father changes you

These first mother-child contacts reinforce the bond between the two, and this is recorded in the brain. As our experiences are stored in it, pregnancies are memorized, so that through an MRI we can know if a woman has been a mother.

This brain modification also occurs in fathers, although in a different way. They also develop the social brain from the moment they perceive their child's kicks or from seeing an ultrasound, but especially from birth, through physical contact. Every time a father bathes his son, holds him or gives him a bottle, he develops a cognitive-emotional bond similar to that of the mother, since he produces oxytocin and lowers his level of testosterone, the hormone of masculine energies.

Advisors: Natalia López Moratalla, professor of Biochemistry at the University of Navarra, and Cristina Silvente, perinatal psychologist.