Have a child and Change Your Brain

In today's encore excerpt - a new and growing body of research is revealing that there are marked and generally positive physiological changes that occur in a mother's brain as a result of giving birth to a child. Experiments and observations on human mothers and laboratory rats provide the evidence:

"Research suggests that motherhood enhances certain types of cognition, improves resistance to stress and sharpens some kinds of memory. On the face of it, the fact that the nervous system manages to transform a new mother from a self-centered organism into an other-focused caregiver is actually quite impressive. All it takes is for new neurons to sprout, certain brain structures to blossom in size and waves of powerful hormones to batter the pregnant woman's physiology. The result is a different and in some ways better brain -- or at least one capable of juggling the challenges of everyday life while maintaining a laserlike focus on the baby.

Who knew?

Excerpt from the following source:

Author: Craig Howard Kinsley and Elizabeth Meyer  
Title: "Maternal Mentality"
Publisher: Scientific American Mind
Date: July/August 2011
Pages: 25-29