What Happens to a Woman's Br

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What Happens to a Woman's Brain When She Becomes a Mother

当女孩变成母亲，她的大脑发生了什么变化

The artist Sarah Walker once told me that becoming a mother is like discovering the existence of a strange new room in the house where you already live. I always liked Walker's description because it’s more precise than the shorthand most people use for life with a newborn: Everything changes.

艺术家Sarah Walker曾告诉我，成为一个母亲的感觉就像突然发现在那所生活了很久的房子还有一个陌生的新房间。我很是喜欢她的描述，这比人们普遍用来描述新妈妈的生活的那句话——一切都变了，要准确得多。

Because a lot of things do change, of course, but for new mothers, some of the starkest differences are also the most intimate ones—the emotional changes. Which, it turns out, are also largely neurological.

对新妈妈来说，很多事情都发生了变化，但那些最明显的变化也是最不能为人道来的变化是情绪上的变化，这些变化很大程度上与神经有关。

Even before a woman gives birth, pregnancy tinkers with the very structure of her brain, several neurologists told me. After centuries of observing behavioral changes in new mothers, scientists are only recently beginning to definitively link the way a woman acts with what's happening in her prefrontal cortex, midbrain, parietal lobes, and elsewhere. Gray matter becomes more concentrated. Activity increases in regions that control empathy, anxiety, and social interaction. On the most basic level, these changes, prompted by a flood of hormones during pregnancy and in the postpartum period, help attract a new mother to her baby. In other words, those maternal feelings of overwhelming love, fierce protectiveness, and constant worry begin with reactions in the brain.

一些神经学家告诉我，即使在分娩之前，孕期妈妈的大脑结构也在变化。经过长达几个世纪对新妈妈的行为变化的观察，最近，科学家们终于将女性的行为方式和他们大脑的前额叶皮质、中脑、顶叶和其他部位的活动联系起来。大脑灰质变得更加集中，控制情感、焦虑和社会交互的神经区域也变得更加活跃。在最基础的水平上解释，这些变化是由怀孕期和产后期产生的大量的生理激素引起的，帮助宝宝更受妈妈吸引。换句话说，这些母性情感，包括无尽奔涌的爱、强烈的保护欲和持续的担忧，都是大脑活动的反映。

Mapping the maternal brain is also, many scientists believe, the key to understanding why so many new mothers experience serious anxiety and depression. An estimated one in six women suffers from postpartum depression, and many more develop behaviors like compulsively washing hands and obsessively checking whether the baby is breathing.

很多科学家认为对母亲大脑的详细研究是了解新妈妈们为何普遍陷入严重焦虑和抑郁情绪的关健。据估计，六分之一的女性罹患产后抑郁，更多的人会出现一些反常行为，例如洗手强迫症，着魔似的检查孩子是否还活着。

“This is what we call an aspect of almost the obsessive compulsive behaviors during the very first few months after the baby’s arrival,” maternal brain researcher Pilyoung Kim told me. "Mothers actually report very high levels of patterns of thinking about things that they cannot control. They're constantly thinking about baby. Is baby healthy? Sick? Full?"

“这些是新妈妈分娩后前几个月的强迫性行为表现的一个方面，”母亲大脑研究员Pilyoung Kim 告诉我说，“妈妈们对她们不能控制的事情总是陷入疯狂的思考，她们总是在担心着宝宝，宝宝健康吗，生病了吗，吃饱了吗？”