<story><title>Pregnancy alters woman&apos;s brain &apos;for at least two years&apos;</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/health-38341901</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>kaitai</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s unfortunate that the link that made the front page here is to the BBC article rather than the NYTimes article [1] on the same study, as the NYTimes article much more clearly addresses a number of the points brought up by commenters here today. The NYTimes article briefly mentions other non-pregnancy related studies on the &amp;quot;pruning&amp;quot; of grey matter. One place to get a bunch of citations for studies on synaptic pruning is in the lit review of [2], since the NYTimes article itself doesn&amp;#x27;t have a citation for synaptic pruning research in adolescents. However, the NYTimes article does link to [3], an article about spontaneous theory of mind and synaptic density in 18-26 year olds. It looks at a this group of people not by age but by performance on theory of mind tasks, examining the relationship with structural MRI data from the participants. This sheds some light on efficiency and good performance on theory of mind tasks and the neuroanatomy of a person. I think for most HNers taking out thinking about pregnancy and looking at this study first would be useful in understanding the results -- we&amp;#x27;ve all got a lot of preconceived notions about the effects of pregnancy that make it hard to think about the results of the study rationally.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;health&amp;#x2F;pregnancy-brain-change.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2016&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;19&amp;#x2F;health&amp;#x2F;pregnancy-brain-cha...&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC2475802&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC2475802&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;
[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;scan.oxfordjournals.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;327.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;scan.oxfordjournals.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;3&amp;#x2F;327.abstract&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Pregnancy alters woman&apos;s brain &apos;for at least two years&apos;</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/news/health-38341901</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>radicalbyte</author><text>Anecdotally I can say it has a large effect on the male brain too. The lack of sleep and time changes you. You get ruthless against time stealers and start seeing 6 hours as a nice long sleep.&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure : I&amp;#x27;ve had about 8hr sleep in 3 days,two sick kids...</text></comment>