For instance, a woman might walk into the kitchen and forget why she did, or perhaps misplace her car keys in the bathroom.
It is sometimes called “momnesia,” “mommy brain,” “pregnancy brain” or “baby brain” — the forgetfulness, mental fogginess and cognitive changes that many women may experience during pregnancy.
This region has abundant brain cells called GABAergic neurons that typically transmit calming signals to other parts of the brain. The study showed that high oestrogen levels over-activate the inhibitory signals by these neurons in the mice, and this directly affected the hippocampus. The researchers performed memory tests including object and location recognition, finding impairment in mice given high oestrogen levels compared to those that were not. When the researchers experimentally turned off the hypothalamus-to-hippocampus neuronal pathway, the mice no longer experienced oestrogen-induced memory problems. But experimentally activating the same pathway impaired memory in the mice, even without higher amounts of oestrogen present. “When we genetically removed estrogen receptors from these hypothalamic neurons, estrogen-induced and pregnancy-induced memory problems in mice were also reversed. We suspect that a similar circuit may play a similar role in humans, although you cannot do this type of invasive study directly in humans,” Dr.
“It is not serious or medically disabling, although it does affect daily functioning and confidence,” said Zheng Sun, a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine specialising in endocrinology and molecular biology and one of the leaders of the study published in the journal Science Bulletin . “The important point is that pregnancy does not simply make someone ‘less intelligent.’ The effects appear to be more subtle and specific to certain cognitive tasks,” said Yanlin He, director of the Brain Glycemic and Metabolism Control Laboratory at Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center and another of the study leaders. The researchers found that a protein called “oestrogen receptor alpha” transmits estrogen’s signals into cells in the hypothalamus. Sun said.
