Altered neural substrates within cognitive networks of postpartum women during working memory process and resting-state

Postpartum working memory decline has been investigated mostly with neuropsychological tests, but neural evidence is almost unknown. Here we investigated task-related neural alterations during working memory task (n-back) and intrinsic alterations during resting-state (rs) in postpartum women using functional MRI (fMRI). Behaviorally, postpartum women showed comparable working memory performances to the controls although there was a tendency of prolonged response time. fMRI analysis results showed hyper-activation in regions belong to the task positive network (TPN) during the task and hypo-rsfMRI values in the default mode network (DMN) regions during rest in postpartum women. Based on these results, we performed network connectivity analysis using nodes of the TPN and DMN. As a result, the DMN showed a tendency of decreased connectivity in postpartum women during the working memory process compared to the controls. Our results suggest that postpartum women might have functional alterations in the DMN, and that hyper-activation in the TPN during a task might be a compensatory mechanism to maintain working memory performance in postpartum women.