Postpartum depression affects about one in seven women who give birth, but few are known for what happens to the brains of pregnant women who are experiencing it. A new study begins to shed some light.
The researchers scanned the brains of dozens of women in the weeks before and after childbirth and found that two areas of the brain involved in the processing and control of emotions increased in size in women who developed symptoms of postpartum depression.
The results, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, are some of the first evidence that postpartum depression is associated with brain changes during pregnancy.
The researchers found that women with depression symptoms in the first month after birth also had increases in their tonsil volume, an area of the brain that plays a key role in emotional treatment. Women who evaluated the experience of their childbirth as difficult or stressful – a perception often associated with postpartum depression – also showed increases in hippocampus volume, an area of the brain that helps to regulate emotions.
“This is really the first step in trying to understand how the brain changes to people who have a normal pregnancy course and then those who are experiencing perinatal depression and what we can do for it,” said Dr. Sheila Shanmugan, an assistant professor of psychiatry, a psychiatric professor of psychiatry.
“The big takeaways are about how these really deep brain changes are there during pregnancy and how we now see it in the depression circuit in particular,” he said.
The study was conducted in Madrid by a group that led to attempts to substantiate the effects of pregnancy on the brain. It is part of an increasing body of research that found that some brain networks, especially those involved in social and emotional treatment, shrink during pregnancy, possibly undergoing a process of regulating adjustment in preparation for parental care. Such changes correspond to overvoltages in pregnancy hormones, especially estrogen, and some last at least two years after childbirth, the researchers found.
The new study seems to be the first to scan and compares the areas of the brain during pregnancy and after childbirth and links changes to postpartum depression, said Elseline Hoekzema, a neuroscientist who is in charge of the pregnancy and brain laboratory.
The authors of the study and other researchers said it was not clear whether the increased tumor in the almond and hippocampus led to the depressive symptoms and perceptions of stress during childbirth or whether the brain changes occurred in response to the symptoms and the symptoms. She was also unclear from the brain she scans because some women seemed to be more vulnerable to these symptoms than others.
“It may be that persons whose almonds are more sensitive to change are also at a higher risk of suffering from postpartum depression,” said Senior Study author, Susana Carmona, neuroscientist leading the neuromedonian laboratory to the Instituto de Investigaci. memory. “It may also be the reverse,” he said, “that in some way these symptoms of depression produce an increase in tonsil volume.”
Researchers studied 88 pregnant women who had not had previously born and had no previous stories of depression or other neuropsychiatric conditions. For a control group, they also examined 30 women who were not pregnant. Pregnant women underwent brain scanning during the third trimester and about a month after birth.
Women completed standard questionnaires to evaluate if they had symptoms of postpartum depression. After childbirth, 15 women showed moderate symptoms of depression and another 13 showed symptoms of depression severe enough to justify the search for medical help, Dr. Carmona said.
Women also completed questionnaires about whether they perceive their experience in childbirth as difficult. Previous studies have shown that “a negative birth experience is linked to increases in depression ratings,” Dr. Carmona said. He said that the difficult experiences of childbirth were not necessarily medical provocative traditions, but could be simple traditions that women considered stressful because of agents such as rude hospital staff.
Laura Pritschet, a postdoctoral scholar at the Pennsylvania University Psychiatry, who did not participate in the study, called “really exciting” results, adding that they show how further research “trying to understand what the brain is changing. depression ”.
Dr. Pritschet, who wrote an article with Dr. Shanmugan in the same issue of the magazine that supports research to determine personalized brain signatures of perinatal depression, stated that the findings of the new study help detect a road map to eventually improve prediction, diagnosis and treatment of postpartum depression.
“If we usually show certain areas of the brain, what do we do? How can we intervene early?” He said. “What is the normal amount of change? Why will this area be vulnerable? Many interesting questions you need to ask below. ”
