Impact of Pregnancy Cortisol Levels on High and Low Working Memory Capacity

Development of children begins at conception however the parent’s health and lifestyle prior to conception could influence a baby development.

A second suggested activity during pregnancy could be for the pregnant woman to take care of herself psychologically and emotionally, to ensure that she is not too stressed or experiencing anxiety. Regular relaxation could be advised by taking up yoga and meditation. Too much prenatal stress can have negative developmental implications for the child later in life. Research has indicated that when mothers-to-be have high levels of pregnancy-specific anxiety, their offspring were significantly more likely to show lower inhibitory control among girls, and lower visuospatial working memory performance among girls and boys (Buss et al., 2011).

Research-Emotions of pregnant women can range from high to low and these are called “mood swings”. Pregnant women may experience fear, forgetfulness, weepiness and postpartum depression. Fear happens in the first -trimester because this is the period where miscarriage could happen, a pregnant woman would also be worried if the labour would hurt and question themselves if they would be good parents. Pregnant women may sometimes be forgetful as they are always in a panic and there is evidence that points to the hippocampus that it may change during pregnancy.

The prenatal period is when quick changes in the fetal organs are vulnerable to organizing change and stability but also building internal working system to trigger emotional responses (McEwen et al. 2013). It is a critical time for brain development and the PFC (McEwen et al. 2013). It exposes a selection of long -term modifications on brain development and behaviour (Entringer et al. 2009). Prenatal exposure to stress affects hormones in the body including the physiology and anatomy that relate to increasing drug levels, cortical communication and more (Entringer et al. 2009). Fetal stress is any event that interrupts a fetal process in stability in the body. (Entringer et al. 2009). During pregnancy, maternal stress impends the fetal nervous system and shortens the length of maturation due to many issues and concerns affecting the mother (Entringer et al. 2009). During pregnancy, maternal psychosocial stress threatens the fetal nervous system and contracts the length of gestation (Entringer et al. 2009). High levels of placental corticotrophin- releasing hormone

mother’s apathy toward caring for and bonding with the infant. Scientific studies have concluded that children of mothers suffering from postpartum depression were independently linked to lower cognitive test scores (Cogill, Caplan, Alexandra, Robson & Kumar, 1986).

Maternal stress also plays a role in the prenatal development affecting the length of gestation. Most commonly, maternal prenatal stress affects birth outcomes including prenatal delivery. Emerging research suggests that measures of pregnancy-specific stress are better than measures of general psychological distress for predicting developmental outcomes including preterm delivery (Davis & Sandman, 2010). Goals from the study in this article investigated maternal cortisol and stress and how each affects cognitive and motor development. Women who reported having higher levels of stress during the prenatal period reported a strong correlation with cognitive and motor development were associated with a stronger correlation of cognitive and motor development in their children, and reported higher levels of stress and anxiety earlier in pregnancy. However, one could question the validity of this report because the information was self-reported.

Technological advances in the past decade have allowed scientists to study the brain in ways that have led to new understanding about how young children develop. There is a new understanding of both the capabilities and the vulnerabilities of infants and young children and that understanding is has influenced the work of caregivers and teachers. During pregnancy, the basic architecture of the brain is formed. Although, certain experiences do influence the developing brain during pregnancy, such as maternal health and stress, intake of drugs and/or alcohol, and quality of maternal nutrition.

Thomas et al. (2) explore the effects of prenatal choline supplementation on spatial working memory. Experimenters randomly assigned pregnant rats

The main weakness of the Working Memory Model is its main component, the central executive. It is not easy to investigate at it is not a “tangible” store like the phonological loop or the visuo-spatial sketchpad. It doesn’t store any kind of information so it is very hard to measure it like the other stores, also because it does not have a very specific task.

Researcher from New York University, psychiatrist Dolores Malaspina, found that women who were pregnant during the Arab-Israel Six Day War gave birth to offspring who were significantly more likely to develop schizophrenia as young adults. Stress alone on the mother can be extremely detrimental to the fetus’s brain. Low income families and countries are at a higher risk for perinatal common mental disorder (Rylander, et al par.33). Research that has been put to rest is that the fetus is completely protected from the outside world, such as the affects of air, water, alcohol and second hand smoke. The child has an increased chance of being directly fed all these toxins from the mother in which the amniotic fluid is a link to both. This is a crucial time for mother and child, being that the defenses of both are at risk (Paul 8). A phenomenal woman by the name of Margaret Spinelli has developed a treatment of therapy for the specific needs of pregnant women, concerning the family, friends and relationships you have in your life. "Relationships, both past and present, assume a special importance when a woman is pregnant" (Paul 164). A special place in your brain called the hypothalamus which controls the release of steroids into your body. The glucocorticoids or steroids could possibly have a long term effect on how effectively your brain can work and process the release of

After looking into the postpartum hormonal and mental changes in woman I began to wonder about similar impacts in pregnancy. A website called parents.com proved helpful in the defining of hormones and describing the impact that they have.(if using indirect quote put article title or author name at the end) For instance, progesterone is a hormone that develops in pregnant women to relax over muscles and strengthen the immune system to unfamiliar DNA(the fetus) that also causes nausea, vomiting and increased hair growth. Similarly, estrogen prepares a woman for pregnancy by enhancing her uterus and enabling it to respond to oxytocin. Oxytocin is a hormone that’s levels don’t increase until the end of a pregnancy, when a woman goes into labor

This essay addresses the working memory model which was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974 in Smith & Kosslyn, 2007) as a response to Atkinson and Shiffrins (1968 in Smith, 2007) multi-store model. According to Baddely and Hitch the multi-store model failed to explain most of the complexities of the human memory and viewed it as being too simplistic. They argued that the short term memory store must have more components rather it being a single inflexible store as suggested previously by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968). The working memory model is therefore an enhancement of the multi store model. According to Baddeley and Hitch working memory is a limited- capacity system that stores and processes information.

Working memory is essential for problem solving and for completing cognitive tasks. Working memory is characterized into two components “short term” and “executive attention” (Underwood, 2016). Executive attention manages information form short-term memory; it blocks distractions from the focus of attention (Underwood, 2016). This can be compared to a net.

During pregnancy, many hormonal changes occur in a women’s body. Recent research studies have shown that sex hormones have many different impacts, including long term effects in a mother’s life even after pregnancy, both positive and negative. Some of these changes take place in the brain, and can alter memory as well as physical changes of the brain. research even shows how sex hormones can minimize the side effects of an autoimmune disease called multiple sclerosis, in woman who have it and become pregnant.

Working memory, Baddeley (1986) also known as short term memory is necessary to maintains relevant information required to perform challenging task. Per se, it is thought to be involved in all forms of cognition (Kolata & Kolata, 2009). Understanding working memory is of critical importance to behavioral neuroscience ????. Working memory is controlled both by seat of intelligence- prefrontal cortex, but also hippocampus (Spellman et al., 2015). The working memory is processed by hippocampus which then relays these signals to the prefrontal cortex in brain for executing memory related tasks (Yoon et al., 2016). It is used to actively maintain and manipulate dynamic information needed to carry out assignment involving real time multitasks (Bolo