Women with postpartum depression have undergone brain changes during pregnancy, the study discovers
Postpartum depression affects about one in seven women who give birth, but it is known little about what happens in the brain of pregnant women who experience it. A new study begins to shed light.The researchers scanned the dozen brain of women in the previous weeks and after childbirth and found that two brain areas involved in the elaboration and control of emotions increased in size in women who have developed symptoms of postpartum depression.The results, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, constitute some of the first tests that postpartum depression is associated with changes in the brain during pregnancy.The researchers discovered that women with symptoms of depression in the first month after childbirth also had increases in the volume of their amygdala, a brain...