Cognitive Reorganization during Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period: An Evolutionary Perspective

Abstract

Where the non-human animal research investigating reproduction-induced cognitive reorganization has focused on neural plasticity and adaptive advantage in response to the demands associated with pregnancy and parenting, human studies have primarily concentrated on pregnancy-induced memory decline. The current review updates Henry and Rendell's 2007 meta-analysis, and examines cognitive reorganization as the result of reproductive experience from an adaptationist perspective. Investigations of pregnancy-induced cognitive change in human females may benefit by focusing on areas, such as social cognition, where a cognitive advantage would serve a protective function, and by extending the study duration beyond pregnancy into the postpartum period.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 116 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.