Neuroanatomical changes associated with human pregnancy

Speaker: Dr. Susana Carmona Cañabate, PhD, Neuroimaging group Hospital Gregorio Marañón Madrid, Spain

Dr. Susana Carmona Cañabate is a Senior Researcher at the “Instituto de Investigation Biomédica del Hospital Gregorio Marañón” in Madrid, Spain. There, she directs the neuroimaging laboratory “Neuromaternal,” which is specialized in studying the human maternal brain by combining cutting-edge multimodal neuroimaging techniques with fluid biomarkers and neuropsychological assessments.

Dr. Cañabate also co-directs the group “CB/07/09/0031” and the “Neuroimaging Platform” at the “Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Salud Mental” (CIBERSAM). Internationally, she co-leads the “Pregnancy and Motherhood” subgroup of the “ENIGMA-Neuroendocrinology Consortium” and chairs the “Maternal Brain Project” at the “Ann S. Bowers Women’s Brain Health Initiative”.

Dr. Cañabate has pursued a scientific career even before completing her degree in Clinical Psychology in 2004. During her research trajectory, Dr. Cañabate has secured funding through various public grants and fellowships that covered her entire predoctoral, postdoctoral, and consolidation stages. As a Ph.D. student, she received training in psychiatry at the “Department of Psychiatry” of the “Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona” and the “Hospital del Mar” (Barcelona, Spain). This training was complemented by various courses and internships in neuroscience and neuroimaging, including a six-month fellowship at the “Social Affective Neuroscience Lab” at “Columbia University” in 2006 (New York, USA). As a postdoc student, Dr. Cañabate deepened her training in neuroimaging through a postdoctoral fellowship at the “Center for Brain Science” at “Harvard University” (2010-2013). In 2013, she was awarded the M-VISION-Marie Curie Actions Incoming Fellowship and later a Miguel Servet contract, which enabled her to establish and direct her laboratory.

Dr. Cañabate’s scientific contributions include 59 peer-reviewed publications, several book chapters, two books, the direction of three national and three international projects, the supervision of six doctoral theses, an intellectual property registration, and four national awards.

During the last decade, Dr. Cañabate has specialized in the study of the human maternal brain. Her first paper as a senior author discovered profound and long-lasting changes during gestation in gray matter volume. This pivotal work, published in Nature Neuroscience in 2017, became the foundation for her laboratory’s research and a reference for other international researchers in the field. Since then, her lab has been working on longitudinally characterizing these changes at multiple levels: hormonally, neuronally, and behaviorally. These efforts have resulted in scientific publications in high-impact journals such as Nature Neuroscience and Nature Reviews Neuroscience, as well as articles featuring their work in prestigious journals such as Nature and Science, the latter describing it as ‘first of its kind’.

Besides her research activity, Dr. Cañabate is also highly committed to scientific dissemination. She has written a book about the maternal brain for the general public and I have participated in various media channels, including television, radio, and the press. Her laboratory also maintains a strong presence on social media (@neuromaternal), engaging over 56K followers to promote public understanding of neuroscience of parenthood.

Talk summary:

In this talk, Dr. Carmona will present recent findings from longitudinal MRI studies that track women from preconception through the postpartum period. Current evidence reveals that pregnancy induces significant and enduring changes in the human brain. These changes appear to be linked to fluctuations in sex steroids and may play a crucial role in facilitating the maternal transition.

Agenda:

9-9:45 am PDT: Speaker presentation

9:45-10:00 am PDT: Question and answer period

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