If you’ve ever been pregnant, you’ve probably experienced pregnancy brain.  You know, that weird lapse in memory that finds you standing in a room completely oblivious as to why you walked in there in the first place?  Or the general befuddlement that causes you to put your keys in the freezer and your ice cream in your purse?  It makes sense that with all the changes happening in your body, your brain would suffer some overload and drop the ball every now and then, right?  Wrong. According to Australian researchers, pregnancy brain is a myth. 

Researchers at The Australian National University say that memory tests performed on both pregnant and non-pregnant women prove that the loss of concentration and ability to focus during pregnancy is nothing more than adaptive behavior.  There is nothing happening in the brain, they say, but with a baby on the way, a pregnant woman is experiencing a shift in mental priorities.  In essence, she’s concentrating on her unborn child at the expense of everything else.

In the study, memory tests were performed on more than 1,200 women at four year intervals, during which time more than half became pregnant.  The results showed that the test scores of the pregnant women remained unchanged during their pregnancies.  In fact, their results continued to compare favorably with those of their non-pregnant peers.

So, how do you explain the very real memory lapses that many pregnant women experience?  According to the researchers, in addition to shifting priorities, pregnant women are just plain tired.  While all human beings will experience some difficulty concentrating due to lack of sleep, a woman in the throes of the physical and emotional stresses of pregnancy is likely to more tired more often.

While the results of this study may have taken away your excuse for going to work in your bathrobe, it does something else as well:  It proves that despite the ice cream dripping from your purse, you are still fully capable of doing your job and keeping up with your non-pregnant peers.

Image: teresawer/Flickr

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