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[00:00.40] The team began following Chrastil shortly before she became pregnant through in vitro fertilization.

[00:10.23] During the pregnancy and for two years after she gave birth, they continued doing MRI brain scans and blood tests to see how her brain changed.

[00:24.04] During this time, Chrastil’s sex hormones, like estrogen, increased and decreased.

[00:32.01] Some of the changes continued past pregnancy.

[00:37.65] Emily Jacobs is with the University of California, Santa Barbara and was also a co-writer of the study.

[00:47.21] Jacobs said earlier studies had taken scans of the brain before and after pregnancy.

[00:55.98] But she said, none had shown changes in the brain as they were taking place.

[01:03.15] Unlike past studies, this one centered on many inner areas of the brain as well as the cerebral cortex, the outermost area, said Joseph Lonstein.

[01:18.56] He is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Michigan State University and was not involved in the research.

[01:29.71] Lonstein said it is “a good first step to understanding much more about whole-brain changes that could be possible in a woman across pregnancy and postpartum.”

[01:45.12] Research in animals has linked some brain changes with qualities that could help the animal care for an infant.

[01:55.21] The new study does not deal with what the changes mean in terms of human behavior.

[02:02.65] However, Lonstein said that it does describe changes in brain areas involved in social cognition, or thinking.

[02:13.81] This is how people act with others -- for example, how they understand their thoughts and feelings.

[02:23.37] The researchers have partners in Spain, and they are developing what they call the Maternal Brain Project.

[02:32.14] The Ann S. Bowers Women’s Brain Health Initiative and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative support the project.

[02:42.76] The researchers say they hope scientists can use findings from more than one woman to predict problems such as postpartum depression.

[02:54.98] “There is so much about the neurobiology of pregnancy that we don’t understand yet,…” Jacobs said.

[03:04.54] She added that this is not because women and pregnancy are too complex.

[03:10.92] More is not known about pregnancy and the brain, she said, because “biomedical sciences have historically ignored women’s health.”