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A Mother's Brain: The New Science of the Neuro-Maternal Revolution
A paradigm-shifting achievement, built from the author’s own research, showing that pregnancy profoundly transforms our brains even more than adolescence does.
Dispels “mommy brain” stereotypes and trailblazes new understanding at the core of humanity with warmth and compassion.
Eighty-five percent of women experience pregnancy at some point in their lives. It enables the very existence of our species. Yet this first step in the process of nurturing the next generation has had little serious, rigorous study—until now. Susana Carmona’s A Mother’s Brain is a landmark in ending sexual bias in women’s health. Among her many initiatives, she is building a unique longitudinal database tracking how mothers’ brains change from preconception to several years after childbirth.
Drawing on her studies of individual mothers, Carmona writes with empathy about the challenges of motherhood from the reshaping of a woman’s immune system and hormonal dynamics to the geography of her cortex and its plasticity. The book reveals that pregnancy triggers rapid changes in the brain, guided by hormones, that seem to nurture maternal well-being and the mother–baby bond. Some cells with the baby’s genetic code even cross into the mother, residing in the mother’s brain for the rest of her life.
Dispels “mommy brain” stereotypes and trailblazes new understanding at the core of humanity with warmth and compassion.
Eighty-five percent of women experience pregnancy at some point in their lives. It enables the very existence of our species. Yet this first step in the process of nurturing the next generation has had little serious, rigorous study—until now. Susana Carmona’s A Mother’s Brain is a landmark in ending sexual bias in women’s health. Among her many initiatives, she is building a unique longitudinal database tracking how mothers’ brains change from preconception to several years after childbirth.
Drawing on her studies of individual mothers, Carmona writes with empathy about the challenges of motherhood from the reshaping of a woman’s immune system and hormonal dynamics to the geography of her cortex and its plasticity. The book reveals that pregnancy triggers rapid changes in the brain, guided by hormones, that seem to nurture maternal well-being and the mother–baby bond. Some cells with the baby’s genetic code even cross into the mother, residing in the mother’s brain for the rest of her life.
- GenresNonfictionScience
192 pages, Hardcover
Published October 6, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 14, 2026
Thank you to MIT Press for providing me with an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.
I’m so grateful that an emerging understanding of matrescence and motherhood is helping to demystify and normalise the changes that occur during pregnancy and motherhood. This book contributes to that important conversation. Susana Carmona writes in an approaching and engaging way, and I appreciated how she included snippets of her own research and motherhood journey in the text. I also appreciated how evidence-based this book was — no pop psychology or flimsy take-always based on a single study. Carmona is upfront about the limitations of the existing research base and rigorous in her analysis of its implications.
The book goes into quite a bit of detail about hormones, neurobiology, and scientific studies despite its short length — perhaps too much for the casual reader — but for those eager to understand this complex topic in depth and enjoy scientific concepts, this is a worthwhile read.
I’m so grateful that an emerging understanding of matrescence and motherhood is helping to demystify and normalise the changes that occur during pregnancy and motherhood. This book contributes to that important conversation. Susana Carmona writes in an approaching and engaging way, and I appreciated how she included snippets of her own research and motherhood journey in the text. I also appreciated how evidence-based this book was — no pop psychology or flimsy take-always based on a single study. Carmona is upfront about the limitations of the existing research base and rigorous in her analysis of its implications.
The book goes into quite a bit of detail about hormones, neurobiology, and scientific studies despite its short length — perhaps too much for the casual reader — but for those eager to understand this complex topic in depth and enjoy scientific concepts, this is a worthwhile read.
Review of advance copy received from Author
This is an important and valuable book. Carmona is one of the foremost experts in the science of the maternal brain, and it is exciting that her book is finally available in English translation. In clear, accessible prose, she unpacks her groundbreaking studies and also provides a readable overview of how the brain and body are transformed by pregnancy and motherhood.
November 1, 2026
I picked this up and even as a maternal fetal medicine specialist I learned things! Written for a lay public with complex ideas explained (much of the book lays out pregnancy physiology and brain science for the lay person before diving into the evidence that exists) this is a great resource for understanding what changes in pregnancy postpartum.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews