科学美国人60秒 SSS Pregnancy Primes the Brain for Motherhood
时间：2018-12-02 作者：英语课 分类：2016年Scientific American(十二)月
Pregnancy 1 brings big physical changes to a woman's body. But what three neuroscientists were more interested in was, what does it do to the woman’s brain? "We were in our 30s, and we were thinking I'd like to have a baby, but look at this, look at this." Susana Carmona, a neuroscientist at the University of Carlos the Third in Madrid.
"And then we realized most of this data came from animal studies. And that there were no solid studies about what really happens to your brain when you get pregnant. And that's how we convinced the boss we should do that even without any funding at this point."
Carmona and her team took MRI scans of 25 women's brains, before and after their first child. They found that parts of the brain dealing 2 with social cognition actually shrunk—reduced in volume—in women who successfully conceived and had kids. That's compared to no changes among control women, and no changes in men—whether they were new fathers or not.
Shrinking sounds bad though: why would you want less grey matter? But Carmona says less does not result in deficits 3 in thinking or memory, and might actually be the result of a good thing: the fine-tuning of connections between neurons. "When you have a lot of routes that arrive to a different place, and there's one that is the shorter and the faster one, the optimal 4 thing would be to close the rest so you never get lost, from point A to point B."
Hormonal 5 fluxes 6 cause similar fine-tuning in the adolescent brain—and hormones 7 might be the culprit for these changes as well. Changes that can last at least two years after pregnancy. The study is in the journal Nature Neuroscience. [Elseline Hoekzema et al., Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure]
The effect of all this? Could be a boost in maternal 8 attachment 9. Fewer hostile feelings towards the baby, and more pleasure playing together. As for Carmona and her two colleagues? They decided 10 not to wait til the study was complete to start their families. "We decided that whatever happens to your brain, we wanted to be mothers."
—Christopher Intagliata
- Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕早期常有恶心的现象。
- Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage.怀孕期吸烟会增加流产的危险。
- This store has an excellent reputation for fair dealing.该商店因买卖公道而享有极高的声誉。
- His fair dealing earned our confidence.他的诚实的行为获得我们的信任。
- The Ministry of Finance consistently overestimated its budget deficits. 财政部一贯高估预算赤字。 来自《简明英汉词典》
- Many of the world's farmers are also incurring economic deficits. 世界上许多农民还在遭受经济上的亏损。 来自辞典例句
- What is the optimal mix of private and public property rights in natural resources?私人和国家的自然资源产权的最适宜的组合是什么？
- Optimal path planning is a key link for the sailing contest.帆船最优行驶路径规划是帆船比赛取胜的关键环节。
- Some viral diseases are more severe during pregnancy, probably tecause of hormonal changes. 有些病毒病在妊娠期间比较严重，可能是由于激素变化引起的。
- She underwent surgical intervention and a subsequent short period of hormonal therapy. 他接受外科手术及随后短暂荷尔蒙治疗。
- In general, fluxes and forces may have different tensorial characters. 一般说来，力和通量可以具有不同的张量特征标。
- The parameterized eddy fluxes simulatedthe seasonal and latitudinal variations reasonably well. 模拟出涡动通量的空间分布和时间变化。
- He is my maternal uncle.他是我舅舅。
- The sight of the hopeless little boy aroused her maternal instincts.那个绝望的小男孩的模样唤起了她的母性。
- She has a great attachment to her sister.她十分依恋她的姐姐。
- She's on attachment to the Ministry of Defense.她现在隶属于国防部。