ETA: I looked it up and the blog has moved here : https://www.discovermagazine.com/author/neuroskeptic ...if there is a search function it would be easier but I am likely not going to spend hours to try and discredit myself.
Thanks. I am unsure now as to whether you agree with me or not if we are referring from the same 2016 study.
Having said that, I used the term IQ rather loosely. And colloquially. Probably not the best choice of term. The import of what I meant was that pregnancy brain/mommy brain changes from the pre pregnancy female brain. The brain elasticity gives it the ability to redirect its connections elsewhere.
Brain plasticity also has been known to reshape itself past a few years post child birth. Whether it will go back to the old normal, we don’t know. But clearly it can be trained.
The point I was trying to make was that Mileva Maric Einstein couldn’t have babies and keep getting pregnant..and not expect her academic performance to suffer. Sitting for exams is not like some office jobs of today where a lot of it is cut and paste/stamp and pass/management kind of jobs. So the pregnancy and children certainly did create a set back for her academic ambitions.
I was probably not clear about underlining the bit about brain plasticity. It takes a while for the ‘mommy brain’ to re-adjust. After the nursing phase, hormonal storms calm down. But she didn’t catch a break or have a supportive husband in Einstein.
The entire reproductive biological engine of a woman is a highly efficient finely tuned machine. One of the key functions is to bond with the baby. This involves changes in serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and endorphins. That’s a heavy dose of hormonal changes. It is irrational to expect the same level of performance as was pre pregnancy. The only jobs she can excel involves babies. To expect anything more from women by painting them in super-woman colours is cruel and uneducated. But that’s what we ask of our ‘working moms’. It doesn’t have to be so if we accept our species strengths and non-strengths. That is much more respectful and would serve women and our species and society better. It is a disservice to women when we equate ‘Male ability’ equals ‘Female ability’. Women can do a lot more for which there is no common measure.
Take for example: performance reviews. There are metrics for that at work. You can compare grades. You can compare experience. You can compare efficiency at work. But how do you compare a woman’s pregnant hormones to a man who can never be pregnant. There are no metrics they share. It’s a whole different ball game.
When we reset the counter during maternity leave, it’s a new brain that comes back after hormones have subsided. How could anyone expect Mileva Einstein jump right back on the horse and perform as she did pre pregnancies? She had gained a whole higher score if Mommy IQ and probably a hit on the Math IQ points. I can’t go on Facebook when my cats are hungry. Imagine when you are hormonal and nursing and pregnant and have to study for higher math exams in an environment where women were not even admitted in the first place at that time. Her academic career was done. Finished. That was my point.
[..]
The brain’s gray matter, located mostly in the outer layers, plays a large role in muscle control and in the execution of high-level tasks like seeing, hearing, processing memories and emotions and decision making. The brain also contains white matter, which insulates the axons, helping brain signals travel further, faster and encouraging motor and sensory function. In Dr. Hoekzema’s study, the white matter of pregnant women’s brains did not appear to be changed at all by pregnancy and new motherhood, while gray matter volume was reduced.
Dr. Hoekzema said that these changes might partially occur because of a process known as “synaptic pruning,” a brain phenomenon that eliminates certain connections between brain cells to encourage the facilitation of new connections. Researchers believe that this process could help people focus on specific behaviors or activities — in this case, taking care of an infant. In other words, a “loss” of brain material might seem like a bad thing, but the changes could actually, in part, be beneficial to people faced with new conditions like parenthood, according to Dr. Hoekzema.
In Dr. Hoekzema’s study, the images showed reductions in gray matter in the hippocampus, which is largely responsible for regulating memory. Instead of focusing on relatively inconsequential tidbits of information, like a movie title, your pregnant or new-mom brain may reallocate resources to the parts of the brain that control “theory of mind,” which allows you to figure out what someone else wants and needs. Dr. Hoekzema says these same areas of the brain also lit up when mothers looked at their infants, suggesting that synaptic pruning might even promote mother-baby bonding.
[..]
*
This is a link from 2019: (nat.neuroscience the original is from 2016/2017)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30008085/
[..] Pregnancy and the postpartum period involve numerous physiological adaptations that enable the development and survival of the offspring. A distinct neural plasticity characterizes the female brain during this period, and dynamic structural and functional changes take place that accompany fundamental behavioral adaptations, stimulating the female to progress from an individual with self-directed needs to being responsible for the care of another life. While many animal studies detail these modifications, an emerging body of research reveals the existence of reproduction-related brain plasticity in human mothers too. Additionally, associations with aspects of maternal caregiving point to adaptive changes that benefit a woman's transition to motherhood. However, the dynamic changes that affect a woman's brain are not merely adaptive, and they likely confer a vulnerability for the development of mental disorders. Here, we review the changes in brain structure and function that a woman undergoes during the peripartum period, outlining associations between these neural alterations and different aspects of maternal care. We additionally discuss peripartum mood disorders and postpartum psychosis, and review the neuroimaging studies that investigate the neural bases of these conditions.[..]
[..] Emerging research points to a valuable role of the monoamine neurotransmitter, serotonin, in the display of maternal behaviors and reproduction-associated plasticity in the maternal brain. Serotonin is also implicated in the pathophysiology of numerous affective disorders and likely plays an important role in the pathophysiology of maternal mental illness. Therefore, the main goals of this review are to detail: (1) how the serotonin system of the female brain changes across pregnancy and postpartum; (2) the role of the central serotonergic system in maternal caregiving and maternal aggression; and (3) how the serotonin system and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications (SSRIs) are involved in the treatment of maternal mental illness. Although there is much work to be done, studying the central serotonin system's multifaceted role in the maternal brain is vital to our understanding of the processes governing matrescence and the maintenance of motherhood.[..]
> I am unsure now as to whether you agree with me or not if we are referring from the same 2016 study.
I disagree with you, specifically about mental performance. Women's mental performance does not drop significantly before, during, or after pregnancy, at least not because of the pregnancy itself.
You keep linking me to pop-sci summaries of Hoekzema's study to try to support your claim. Please go read Hoekzema's paper instead and read it beyond the abstract.
Your assumptions about the academic potential of mothers are not only NOT supported by the data, they are also exactly the kind of attitudes that for centuries have forced women to attribute their accomplishments to men in order to be taken seriously.
My point is, there's a reason that what you are claiming is unpopular, and it's not because of some liberal agenda to silence you. It's because the facts do not support your claims.
I also linked to two 2019 papers after the 2016 paper. Nature Neuroscience is not ‘pop-sci’. What data do you have to make your claim? Have you conducted any independent studies? Published any? Got any ‘pop-sci’ reference? What is your reasoning? I don’t see anything other than an unsupported opinion in your argument against me.
I don’t think there is anything more to say if you believe that pregnancy hormones does not affect the female brain.
‘Performance’ is relative. A ticket puncher can probably still perform at the same level on pregnancy brain. A student attempting competitive exams may be flailing. Maybe you have a specific job in mind when you say ‘mental performance’ doesn’t change with pregnancy. But I don’t think we should be taking the specificities into account to be objective.
ETA: it’s terrible when random claims are made that women’s performance and mental acuity doesn’t alter due to pregnancy. Other than that it flies in the face of reality for millions of women who have had the experience of birthing and pregnancy, it sets an impossible standard for other women. Mental health that has nothing to do with pregnancy occurs now and only harms women.
Such claims are a stunning display of ignorance about the toll pregnancy and child birth takes on a woman. It’s many times more drastic for multiple back to back pregnancies.
Women should be mad about such ignorant expectations rather than accept unreasonable expectations after pregnancy. Insane and mind boggling. It beggars belief that it’s more important to gain some kind of politically correct position of equity than acknowledge some of the serious issues that women face here. It’s a mass burial of facts. And denial of biology. This harms women in worse ways than ‘gender inequality’.
Some would call this gaslighting of an entire gender of a certain age. It’s worse than ‘mental performance’ in a job. Post partum depression and other mental health issues are caused by an entire mismatch of pregnancy hormone cocktails.(/end addition to comment)
On the same note, in this case..Mileva Einstein who was a mathematics student sitting for exams failed likely because of pregnancy brain because she became pregnancy thrice back to back, robbing her of her previous brilliance in her field. It was due to pregnancy hormones. That’s my stance.
Unfortunately the Discover archives don't seem to be working but you should educate yourself on the limits of brain science and show more intellectual humility.
The author, a neuroscientst writes "More generally, the controversy over human sex differences is a vast one, with a huge amount of evidence to consider, and it isn't going to be settled by one neuroimaging study, or even a hundred."
You seem like the type of person who makes up their mind after one study, as long as it fits your biases regarding gender. You would be well service by talking less and realizing much of the world is beyond your understanding as a human with limited information and (likely) a limited understanding of brain science.
you have to cite other studies if you want to discredit the ones linked.
otherwise, you are asking me to just take your word for it. i have the word of hundreds of women in my family and friends circle..not to mention my own personal lived experience as a woman..to attest that female hormones act differently and that brain plasticity both ways occurs with trauma and subsequently retraining. i am not bringing up testimonials second hand or my lived experience nor political correctness. i am bringing up scientific studies. what are you bringing to the table?
you havent offered anything substantial or credible other than call Nature* Neuroscience 'junk science' and look up a skeptic blogger who isnt even saying anything about the subject at hand. and in the link he provided, he is washing his hands off a Daily Mail article about women and food.
[..]This appeared in the Daily Mail a while back. This headline was based on a neuroimaging experiment, which, predictably, didn't prove anything of the kind. Yawn. I've written about this kind of thing before, and no doubt I will do again. But why do I do it? What's the harm in this kind of thing?
A cynic might say that this kind of thing is harmless fun - or at any rate, harmless. No-one really cares about articles like this, and no-one takes them seriously. No-one's going to read this article and start to think that all women are impulsive and gluttonous - at least not unless they were a sexist pig to begin with.[..]
if 'neuroskeptic' is going to disown Nature Neuroscience like he is doing with a Daily Mail article, then we certainly dont have anything to discuss here anymore.
I'm not convinced you understand the studies you are citing but let's posit you do understand them. If a study came out tomorrow that you felt contradicted what you just cited, you would retract it? And therefore it would be obvious what you wrote here today was false?
Maybe, again, you should show a little humility instead of spreading stereotypes as if they are objective facts.
ETA: I looked it up and the blog has moved here : https://www.discovermagazine.com/author/neuroskeptic ...if there is a search function it would be easier but I am likely not going to spend hours to try and discredit myself.