Description
This is Episode #12 of the A-KID-EMIA podcast, the home for parent-scholars looking to balance personal and professional goals. This is the third of an eight-part monthly series generously funded by the American Philosophical Association.
When your brain is necessary for your work, pregnancy can feel like a gamble: will my mind be too foggy to research? How long will it take to recover (if ever)? What am I even getting myself into? Worries like these plague a lot of mothers, the experienced and the aspiring alike. In today’s episode, a pioneering researcher on the brain in gestation puts these anxieties to rest. Laura Pritschet is the lead author of the first neuroscientific study of the brain during pregnancy, in contrast to earlier research which focused exclusively on the pre-conception and postpartum periods. She explains in laymen’s terms how the minds of both moms and dads are physically affected by pregnancy and subsequent childcare. She also shares how the short and long-term neurological changes of gestation produce lasting cognitive benefits, including advantages that can specifically help academics. Far from the standard declension narrative, the latest neuroscience shows that pregnancy is in fact a period of rapid finetuning, efficiency, and resilience.
Chapters
0:00-1:03 - Introduction
1:04-8:55 - Background on Laura’s groundbreaking study & why pregnancy neuroscience is understudied
8:56-18:19 - Her study’s findings and what they mean
18:20-20:56 - Brain effects for fathers
20:57-25:52 - Should parents fear ‘baby brain’?
25:53-27:39 - Long-term cognitive benefits of gestation
27:40-34:40 - Cognitive advantages for academic work specifically
36:50-40:29 - The durability of pregnancy-induced anatomical brain changes across time
40:30-42:52 - Pregnancy’s affect on attentional focus
42:53-45:40 - What we know about successive pregnancies
45:46- The importance of neuroscience for parents
