A new neuroscience of pregnancy (Big Ideas in Neuroscience) | Nirao Shah & Katrin Svensson

We know shockingly little about what goes on in a mother’s brain during pregnancy.For example, we know only a handful of the hormones involved—out of hundreds scientists think may exist—and very little about how they might impact the brain. This gap in our understanding is one of the reasons we don’t have great treatments for pregnancy-related maladies, whether it’s extreme nausea, or anxiety and depression.Closing this gap is the mission of the new Stanford Neuro-Pregnancy Initiative, part of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute's Big Ideas in Neuroscience Program. Today on the show, we speak with initiative leaders Nirao Shah, a neuroscientist who studies sex differences in animal behavior, and Katrin Svensson is an expert in how our tissues use hormones to communicate in health and disease. Together with Longzhi Tan, an expert in gene regulation and 3d genome structure, the team aims to chart the cellular and molecular transformation that occurs in a mother's brain during pregnancy, in hopes of better understanding this fundamental event in a person's life and improving health outcomes for both mothers and infants. Learn more:Big Ideas in Neuroscience tackle brain science of everyday life and more (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026)Nirao Shah labKatrin Svensson labLongzhi Tan labReferences:Hoekzema, E., et al. (2017) Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure. Nat Neurosci 20, 287–296. This is the landmark neuroimaging study discussed in the episode that provided evidence of long-lasting, pregnancy-induced changes in the structure of the human brain. Fejzo, M., et al. (2024) GDF15 linked to maternal risk of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. Nature 625, 760–767. This recent paper provides strong evidence that the hormone GDF15 acts on the brainstem to cause nausea and vomiting in pregnancy.Knoedler J, et al. A functional cellular framework for sex and estrous cycle-dependent gene expression and behavior. Cell. 185, e1–e18 (2022). This is the work from Dr. Shah’s lab mentioned in the episode, identifying a specific circuit in the hypothalamus that changes its connectivity across the estrous cycle to control female mating behavior.Ladyman S.R., et al.  (2021) A reduction in voluntary physical activity in early pregnancy in mice is mediated by prolactin eLife 10:e62260 This is the research mentioned from Dr. Grattan’s lab showing that the hormone prolactin acts on the hypothalamus to reduce locomotor activity and anxiety-like behavior in pregnant mice.Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected] more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.