From The Times September 19, 2009 ‘Nappy brain’: when mummy loses her marbles Motherhood and scattiness often go hand in hand.
But scientists are still struggling to find a physiological cause Rachel Carlyle If the car in front suddenly stops at a green light, don’t sound the horn right away. Instead, peer through the windows and check for children’s car seats. If they’re present, the driver may deserve sympathy, not anger — her momentary lapse may be the result of “nappy brain”, the mental fog that seems intent on ruining mothers’ best efforts at super-efficiency. But while blaming a foggy brain on pregnancy may be justified — an Australian study last year that found that a pregnant woman’s memory was comparable to that of a 60-year-old — should we still be looking for excuses when our children are well into primary school? Scientists have been investigating the existence of so-called mummy brain for 20 years, but there are still no clear answers. Forget stratospherically high achievers such as Kim Clijsters who, last weekend, won the US Open tennis title less than 18 months after giving birth to her daughter. According to Dr Catherine Loveday, a neuroscientist at the University of Westminster, there is roughly the same number of studies reporting cognitive decline in mothers as there are suggesting no effect. She began researching the topic after she had her sons, now aged 2 and 7, because she wondered what was happening to her own brain. “I had moments of complete amnesia, when I forgot whether something had happened or not. I was desperate to know if I was imagining it,” she says. “On balance, given the scientific evidence, there is probably some temporary impairment, which has been noted to be worse in older mothers and those with higher educational achievements. It is weighted towards a specific deficit in memory.” So what could be happening in the brain? Some believe that the problem is cultural: women are expecting a decline in their memory so will find evidence for it. A ten-year research project among 2,500 women in Australia, which ended this year, could find no evidence for mummy brain. Professor Helen Christensen, the lead researcher, concluded that mothers were suffering normal lapses, but attributing them to motherhood. Others believe that sleep deprivation is the cause; the primary caregiver is estimated to lose 700 hours of sleep in a baby’s first year. “If you are tired, you are much less likely to engage properly with a task — which means your brain is not processing it effectively, and you will find it more difficult to retrieve as a memory later on,” Robin Morris, Professor of Neuropsychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, says. There is also the problem of concentration. “When you have a child, there are constantly new things to learn, which take up a lot of brain space,” Loveday says. “We have a limited amount of attentional capacity and we are focused elsewhere.” Those who have investigated the physiology of the brain have discovered that having children, in some cases, actually sharpens the brain. Professor Craig Kinsley, of the University of Richmond, Virginia, has been researching the female brain for 13 years and found in experiments that mother rats (which have a similar brain profile to humans) have better spatial skills than non-mothers and can navigate a maze to find food much faster. The more offspring they had, the faster they found the food. They were also braver, better at multi-tasking, had sharper senses, and were less prone to anxiety and stress. He believes that the problem is down to changes in the hard-wiring of the female brain during pregnancy when new neurons and pathways are created at a dizzying rate. “We have evidence that these beneficial changes are long-lasting and, in some respects, permanent,” he says. But if our brains are so sharp, why can’t we remember the phone number that we committed to memory only 20 minutes ago? “The evolution of our brains over 10,000 years has prepared us to focus on the infant,” Kinsley says. “It has not prepared us to have the memory for running a business or thinking with numbers.” Katherine Ellison, who wrote The Mommy Brain (Perseus, £8.99), says that women should be positive: “Telling ourselves that we have mummy brain becomes a selffulfilling prophecy.” Avoiding ‘nappy brain’ Get organised: use lists, write down dates in a diary. Delegate: get your partner to take on some of the domestic chores that women seem to end up doing by default. Admit that you are finding it difficult to remember things: people will forgive the odd memory lapse. Laugh off the worst embarrassments. Do not take on too much: avoid returning to work immediately or organising big projects such as a house refurb or academic thesis.
