Reacción a "Imaging study details changes in a woman's brain during and after pregnancy"

[The methods] are not only robust but also innovative, as they use a methodology (dense-sampling) that allows for very good temporal resolution, i.e. very precise tracing of highly time-varying phenomena.  

The entire trajectory of changes in cortical thickness [described] matches perfectly with previous studies. Moreover, it brings together, for the first time, data and measures from before, during and after-pregnancy - not only cortical thickness, but also data on the integrity of the white matter and hippocampus. 

It is true that such [research] designs gain statistical power from the number of time points, sessions, rather than the number of subjects. The way forward now is to evaluate this phenomenon in a larger number of subjects in order to see how these changes are related to factors that show a high variability between subjects: type of birth, breastfeeding, depressive symptoms, socioeconomic status, maternity leave, etc... 

Undoubtedly, this and other studies focused on characterising brain changes in pregnant women can help us to understand, predict and prevent postpartum mental health conditions, among other phenomena. But we are still far from making specific recommendations.