In addition to the physical changes that the future mother's body undergoes during pregnancy, it has been established that the arrival of the baby also causes certain changes in the woman's brain.
Pregnancy changes the size and structure of brain areas involved in understanding other people's thoughts, feelings, beliefs and intentions, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Many of these changes last for two years after giving birth.
"We did not investigate whether the changes extend beyond that period," said Elseline Hoekzema, one of the authors of the study and a scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands.
Previous research conducted on mice has shown that some of the changes in brain and behavior after pregnancy persist into old age, but this has not yet been established in humans, given that these studies last only two years.
The significance of these changes and their duration have yet to be determined, scientists said.
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