Pregnancy can be a time of joy and expectancy for a woman, but few women will experience a pregnancy completely devoid of negative side effects. While most symptoms such as nausea and vomiting, weight gain, and increased fatigue can be attributed to measurable increases in hormone levels, other symptoms, such as short-term memory loss, are less quantifiable, and therefore, perhaps less palpable. In fact, recent data suggests that the memory loss experienced by pregnant and postpartum women is both real and measurable, despite an apparent lack of association with either anxiety or hormone levels. The Basics of Memory Memory is the key to thinking and learning, and serves as the information database of the brain.
Psychologists classify memory into the four R s - recollection, recall, recognition, and relearning.
While recall is the unaided remembrance of past events, recollection involves remembering through the use of hints or clues. Recognition involves the correct identification of previously encountered information. Relearning is the ability to assimilate new information based upon previously learned information. Exactly how and where in the brain information is stored is still a mystery. Some scientists have found that stimulating specific areas of the brain brings certain memories to mind, leading to the belief that memories are stored in specific loci of the brain, while others believe the process is much more complicated, involving areas of the brain working together to conjure a memory.