Pregnancy brain? Relationships between meeting prenatal physical activity guidelines, stress, anxiety, cognitive functioning in pregnancy and postpartum.

OBJECTIVE

Meeting physical activity (PA) guidelines and regulating mood may protect perinatal women from cognitive changes, however, scant research has examined these factors. This study examined whether PA and mood (anxiety/depressive symptoms) were associated with pre-and postnatal cognitive failures (perception/memory/action lapses).

METHODS AND MEASURES: Pregnant women (N = 56) from a longitudinal cohort study completed measures at 28-30 wks gestation and 6 wks postpartum. To track within-person PA/mood patterns from pregnancy to postpartum, women were grouped by PA guideline adherence and mood symptoms at both, one, or neither timepoint. General linear models assessed associations; exploratory analyses examined whether PA modified relationships.

RESULTS

Higher prenatal mood symptoms were associated with greater prenatal and postpartum cognitive failures. Although PA was not directly associated with perinatal cognition, PA moderated prenatal mood-cognitive failures associations such that cognitive failures increased with depressive symptoms at a lower rate for the meet PA guidelines group and increased with anxiety symptoms at a lower rate for the not meet postpartum PA guidelines.

CONCLUSION

Better perinatal mood regulation was associated with fewer cognitive failures. Meeting PA guidelines may help women regulate the mood-cognitive failures relationship in pregnancy, but may not have the same impact in postpartum. Future research should examine dynamical changes in PA, mood, and cognitive failures to identify effective interventions and understand long-term impacts of childbirth on maternal cognition.