CAMBRIDGE, MA — For generations, women have been told that the forgetfulness, emotional shifts, sensory changes, and altered sense of self that accompany pregnancy and new motherhood are simply “mommy brain.” But a revolution in neuroscience is revealing something far more profound: pregnancy is one of the most dramatic periods of brain remodeling in adult life.
In A Mother’s Brain , pioneering neuroscientist Susana Carmona takes readers inside this extraordinary transformation, drawing on more than a decade of groundbreaking research to reveal how pregnancy reshapes the brain—and why those changes may be essential to maternal well-being, bonding, social cognition, and the development of the next generation.
Carmona was among the first researchers to document structural changes in the brains of new mothers. Today, she is at the forefront of the emerging field of neuromaternal science , leading international research and building a unique longitudinal database tracking how mothers’ brains change from preconception through several years after childbirth.
Her research is helping overturn the idea that the adult brain is largely fixed. Pregnancy demonstrates just how remarkably plastic the brain remains—and how profoundly hormones, the immune system, the placenta, and the experience of becoming a parent can reshape it.
The changes are astonishing. Pregnancy can alter the brain’s gray matter and cortical volume while strengthening aspects of its white-matter architecture. Brain networks involved in social cognition and understanding other people can be remodeled, potentially helping mothers become more attuned to their infants. Some changes persist for years. And, remarkably, cells carrying a baby’s genetic material can cross into the mother’s body and may remain in her brain long after pregnancy.
As Carmona shows, what has been dismissed as a deficit may instead be a remarkable neurological adaptation —a brain becoming newly specialized for the demands of motherhood.
Eighty-five percent of women experience pregnancy at some point in their lives, yet pregnancy and motherhood have historically received remarkably little rigorous neuroscientific study. A Mother’s Brain is a landmark in correcting that imbalance.
Drawing on her own pioneering studies of individual mothers, Carmona explores the dramatic biological transformation that accompanies pregnancy—from hormonal and immune changes to the remodeling and plasticity of the cerebral cortex. She reveals how pregnancy triggers rapid brain changes that may support maternal well-being and the mother–baby bond—and explores the astonishing discovery that some cells carrying the baby’s genetic code can cross into the mother and reside in her brain for decades, potentially even for life.
The book offers a new way of understanding matrescence , the profound transition to motherhood, and makes the case that it deserves the same scientific attention that neuroscience has long devoted to other major periods of development.
Carmona’s research is attracting major attention as scientists increasingly recognize pregnancy as a period of profound adult neuroplasticity.
Smithsonian Magazine recently featured Carmona’s work in an in-depth examination of how pregnancy changes the maternal brain and how new discoveries are transforming scientists’ understanding of the transition to motherhood.
National Geographic has likewise highlighted the rapidly developing science of the maternal brain, examining how pregnancy can reshape the brain’s structure and function and challenging the long-standing notion that “mommy brain” is simply a form of cognitive decline.
Susana Carmona, PhD , is a pioneering neuroscientist and the founder of Neuromaternal , a research lab based in Madrid dedicated to understanding how pregnancy and motherhood transform the human brain. She is a mother herself and brings both scientific expertise and lived experience to her work.
Carmona has led international research projects examining the neurological changes associated with pregnancy and the transition to motherhood. Her groundbreaking research has helped establish pregnancy and matrescence—the transition to motherhood—as a major period of adult neuroplasticity. Her findings have been published in leading scientific journals including Science Advances and Nature Neuroscience , among many other publications.
Carmona’s research has attracted widespread international attention and has been referenced across popular media, from the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian , and Mother Jones .
Her work is helping transform how scientists, doctors, and the public understand the maternal brain, challenging the notion that pregnancy-related cognitive changes are simply “mommy brain” and revealing instead the extraordinary capacity of the adult brain to adapt, reorganize, and change.
“Dr. Susana Carmona has been a pioneer in shaping our understanding of the maternal brain. Her research has brought scientific rigor to a topic too often dismissed or misunderstood. In this timely and compelling book, she shares a decade of groundbreaking discoveries that illuminate how motherhood reshapes the brain—with clarity, nuance, and care.”
— Lisa Mosconi , Director of the Weill Cornell Medicine Women’s Brain Initiative; New York Times bestselling author of The Menopause Brain and The XX Brain
“Carmona illuminates the maternal brain—how its size and functionality changes, the way it receives genetic information from the placenta, how it’s permanently altered by pregnancy, and more. A Mother’s Brain is the perfect guide to understanding a transformative process that sits at the center of humanity.”
— Dana Suskind , author of the New York Times bestseller Parent Nation and Human Raised
“As a long-term neuroscientist, and a brand-new grandfather, I was absorbed by Susana Carmona’s A Mother’s Brain . Beyond the value of her lucid writing, she has provided parents and health professionals with something that has been strangely missing—an authoritative, scientific overview of what goes on in the brain at this crucial time in the lives of mothers and their babies.”
— Joseph LeDoux , author of Anxious
“Susana Carmona, one of the pioneering neuroscientists to first document structural changes in a new mother’s brain, also happens to be a gifted storyteller. She takes us on a detailed tour of hormonal and neural transformations during this life-altering phase in a woman’s life that is not only scientifically up-to-the-minute but also incredibly readable. I highly recommend this book.”
— Sarah Blaffer Hrdy , author of Mother Nature , Mothers and Others , and Father Time
“A powerful, awe-inspiring, beautiful book. A Mother’s Brain is fascinating, thrilling, consoling, and accessible, a groundbreaking work by a pioneering scientist at the cutting edge of matrescence research. Carmona shows us how, as a society, we need to honor the intensity of pregnancy, birth, and new motherhood rather than dismiss it. A must-read for all.”
— Lucy Jones , author of Matrescence: On Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood
“Susana Carmona is a tour de force … [Her] groundbreaking work tackles fundamental questions about the maternal brain, discoveries that are poised to deepen our basic understanding of the human brain and its stunning capacity for plasticity in adulthood.”
— Emily Jacobs , Director of the Ann S. Bowers Women’s Brain Health Initiative, UC Santa Barbara
“With an engaging and accessible approach, A Mother’s Brain effectively covers this new research area applying neuroscience to the transition to parenthood, of which Dr. Carmona is now a world-renowned leader.”
— Catherine Monk , Diana Vagelos Professor of Women’s Mental Health and Founding Director, Center for the Transition to Parenthood, Columbia University
“Motherhood is transformative: Mothers themselves have recognized this fact for millennia. Now, esteemed neuroscientist Susana Carmona provides the scientific framework for how and why motherhood so dramatically affects women’s brains and hormones. This book is a wonderful gift to mothers, and to anyone who cares about mothers.”
— Darby Saxbe , Professor of Psychology, University of Southern California; author of Dad Brain
A Mother’s Brain is at once a groundbreaking work of neuroscience and an accessible, deeply human account of what happens when a person becomes a parent. It challenges outdated assumptions about “mommy brain,” illuminates the extraordinary plasticity of the adult brain, and makes a compelling case for taking pregnancy and matrescence seriously as major biological and neurological transitions.
For anyone interested in neuroscience, women’s health, pregnancy, parenting, psychology, reproductive health, or the science of human behavior , Carmona offers a transformative new understanding of one of the most consequential biological transitions in a person’s life.
Susana Carmona, PhD
Translated by Lily Meyer
The MIT Press
Publication Date: October 6, 2026
Hardcover | $27.95 | 192 pages
ISBN: 978-0-262-05478-2
For more information about A Mother’s Brain from The MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262054782/a-mothers-brain/
Nicholas DiSabatino
Manager, Global Publicity and Head of Author Relations
The MIT Press
ndisabat@mit.edu
330-313-0612