Behavior/Humans

Pregnant Women Have Impaired Memory!

The effect lasts at least one year after giving birth

By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

6th of February 2008, 09:28 GMT

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Did your wife forget to treat you right after giving birth? That's normal, as a new Australian research published in the "Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology" has confirmed that pregnancy can cause memory impairment. The issue can last for at least a year after giving birth, but these effects are minor and they affect especially unfamiliar or demanding tasks.

"The memory deficits many women experience during and after

pregnancy are pretty much like the modest deficits you'd find when comparing healthy 20-year-olds with healthy 60-year-olds," said co-author Julie Henry, a psychology researcher at the University of New South Wales.

The meta-analysis of the findings of 14 different researches from around the world, that checked the memory performances of over 1,000 pregnant women, mothers and non-pregnant women. Pregnant women scored much worse on some memory tests, but not on all of them. The biggest challenge for the pregnant women was represented by new or difficult tasks.

"Regular, well-practiced memory tasks - such as remembering phone numbers of friends and family members - are unlikely to be affected. It's a different story, though, when you have to remember new phone numbers, people's names or hold in mind several different pieces of information, such as when multi-tasking," said lead author Peter Rendell, Associate Professor at the Australian Catholic University.

The study revealed that the effects persisted one year after childbirth, but how long they last it could not be said, as no research went further than that. Moreover, no explicit explanation could be given for this memory impairment.

"Although we have no experimental evidence for it, our suspicion is that lifestyle factors are relevant. In pregnancy your normal routines are disrupted and you can suffer sleep deprivation after the birth - we know from other research that either of those things can affect cognitive performance," said Henry.

TAGS:

pregnancy | memory | cognitive

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