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Pregnancy alters woman's brain 'for at least two years'

bbc.com

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Re: Pregnancy alters woman's brain 'for at least two years'

#41

Post by dsacco »

mistermann wrote: post #31
joncrocks wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be slightly careful here about separating out the findings from the speculation. The study[1] looked at what changed in the women's brains, the regions in which it changed, and then tested to see which areas 'lit up' when viewing a picture of their own child vs. other children. In addition measurements were taken over time to see how permanent the changes were. The reasons for change and the actual/quantitative i…

FWIW my wife underwent a drastic personality change after giving birth, and I would definitely agree with this being one of the symptoms. But just one data point of course.

I really don't want this to come across as rude, because I don't mean to single you out or invalidate your experience (or your contribution to discussion!).

That said, what is the purpose of offering your anecdotal experience if you acknowledge that it is an n=1 datapoint? I understand that it's in good faith to acknowledge that your personal experience doesn't offer any statistical rigor to an interpretation of the foregoing article, but in my opinion your comment primes other readers in the discussion to subconsciously accept certain interpretations that aren't justified by the research. The main takeaway of your comment is "For what it's worth, I have an anecdote confirming an interpretation of the data that is not presented in the original study", and while you follow it up with the anecdote-acknowledgement, the "damage is done" so to speak. You've already opened Pandora's Box with regards to your subtle confirmation of the unsubstantiated interpretation.

In my experience it takes conscious effort not to allow anecdotes to impact interpretation of data, and while I don't think you're doing it purposefully, I believe it's counterproductive to the parent comment's point to offer an anecdote to the discussion while simultaneously acknowledging that the anecdote does not in any way prove the interpretation.

Re: Pregnancy alters woman's brain 'for at least two years'

#42

Post by dominotw »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #36

>And they compared these women's brains with those of 19 first-time fathers, 17 men without children and 20 women who had never given birth. Incomplete control group. They should have included first time adoptive mothers and women who gave their baby up for adoption. Also extremely small sample size. EDIT: It would have also been very relevant to include a sample of lesbian parents of the same child where one parent…

yes exactly, how did they not think of this obvious control group.

Re: Pregnancy alters woman's brain 'for at least two years'

#43

Post by unethical_ban »

dsacco wrote: post #41
mistermann wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW my wife underwent a drastic personality change after giving birth, and I would definitely agree with this being one of the symptoms. But just one data point of course.

I really don't want this to come across as rude, because I don't mean to single you out or invalidate your experience (or your contribution to discussion!). That said, what is the purpose of offering your anecdotal experience if you acknowledge that it is an n=1 datapoint? I understand that it's in good faith to acknowledge that your personal experience doesn't offer any statistical rigor to an interpretation of the…

Because this is Hacker News, not the Journal of the American Medical Association. It's a community, and since it's acknowledged by the poster not to be a scientific observation, I'm not sure he needs corrected on it.

Re: Pregnancy alters woman's brain 'for at least two years'

#44

Post by dsacco »

unethical_ban wrote: post #43
dsacco wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't want this to come across as rude, because I don't mean to single you out or invalidate your experience (or your contribution to discussion!). That said, what is the purpose of offering your anecdotal experience if you acknowledge that it is an n=1 datapoint? I understand that it's in good faith to acknowledge that your personal experience doesn't offer any statistical rigor to an interpretation of the…

Because this is Hacker News, not the Journal of the American Medical Association. It's a community, and since it's acknowledged by the poster not to be a scientific observation, I'm not sure he needs corrected on it.

That's a fair point, and maybe I'm just demonstrating a personal bias for a particular type of discussion that isn't reflected on Hacker News. However, I didn't try to "correct" the grandparent commenter so much as show that while an acknowledgement of an anecdote is made in good faith, it doesn't take away from the overall impact on the audience. We may not be researchers peer reviewing the work of colleagues here, but we can still strive for a certain level of scientific literacy and decorum in our discussion.

Stated another way - if this were an article about computer science instead of neuroscience, would you expect the overall discussion to be stronger, the same or weaker compared to this discussion in terms of rigor? Furthermore, would you think that rigor was warranted on this forum (these aren't rhetorical questions, I'm curious)? I understand that disciplines like neuroscience allow us to relate with the science a bit (it's tempting to retroactively interpret our experiences with novel research!) but comments offering anecdotes, even with those expressly accounted for, allow biases to be couched in between legitimate data. I certainly think the grandparent comment would be challenged similarly if this was a psychological study with the current concerns about replication.

Re: Pregnancy alters woman's brain 'for at least two years'

#45

Post by TeMPOraL »

alphydan wrote: post #29
6DM wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this was ultimately the leap I was missing. The narrowing down of choices does tend to make things clearer and decisions easier.

Following that argument then simple-minded businessmen or people with a Manichean world-view should be great at taking care of babies, since they make quick judgement calls? It sounds a little too simplistic, doesn't it?

That's a function of how well calibrated are those judgement calls with well-being of the baby.

Soldiers who make quick judgement calls are better than ones who don't; but they're trained to have their judgement properly calibrated with the task at hand.

Re: Pregnancy alters woman's brain 'for at least two years'

#46

Post by tcbawo »

dsacco wrote: post #41
mistermann wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW my wife underwent a drastic personality change after giving birth, and I would definitely agree with this being one of the symptoms. But just one data point of course.

I really don't want this to come across as rude, because I don't mean to single you out or invalidate your experience (or your contribution to discussion!). That said, what is the purpose of offering your anecdotal experience if you acknowledge that it is an n=1 datapoint? I understand that it's in good faith to acknowledge that your personal experience doesn't offer any statistical rigor to an interpretation of the…

Do research methodologies exist that can document subtle personality changes? This seems highly subjective.

Re: Pregnancy alters woman's brain 'for at least two years'

#47

Post by xkcd-sucks »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #36

>And they compared these women's brains with those of 19 first-time fathers, 17 men without children and 20 women who had never given birth. Incomplete control group. They should have included first time adoptive mothers and women who gave their baby up for adoption. Also extremely small sample size. EDIT: It would have also been very relevant to include a sample of lesbian parents of the same child where one parent…

It's a bit surprising that a Nature Neuro paper didn't have more control groups. But on the other hand, it's trickier to get ahold of first time adoptive mothers etc. And on the third hand, there's always somebody requesting increasingly specific control groups and one just has to stop and publish at some point.

Re: Pregnancy alters woman's brain 'for at least two years'

#49

Post by kaybe »

ingamx77 wrote: post #26

I had the baby while at university, and it's true. While I was always brilliant in math and physics, I couldn't do simple things anymore. That was very frustrating. Thanks god the physics professor was very forgiving as he noticed the change

Did it revert, and after what time if yes?
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