Congratulations to Isobel Cohen, 33, who has just graduated from Cambridge University with first-class honors in English — taking her exams 28 hours after having a baby. She sat papers on practical criticism and Shakespeare, and the Greek Tragedies in a hospital dressing gown and slippers.
Now that the results are in and baby Beatrice is six weeks old, it is just slightly annoying that Cohen is back-pedaling from her achievement with the standard cliches about “mumnesia.”
“I wonder how I held it together and got through them because now I’m into full-blown ‘nappy brain,’” she said
“While my concentration and memory were not as good as they might have been, I could still do things I needed to do and retain enough information to write decent essays,” she said.
Experts disagree about how childbirth affects intellectual ability. A 2010 study by the US National Institute of Mental Health found that new moms’ brains “bulk up as they cope with the new demands babies bring.”
They scanned the brains of 19 mothers and a comparison of images taken two to four weeks before birth and three to four months after, showed a significant increase in brain growth.
On the other hand, higher levels of estrogen and progesterone in pregnancy are thought to have a negative effect on the parts of the brain governing spatial memory.
What about the benign idiocy we think of as “preg head?” That is most likely down to sleep deprivation, which would not have kicked at the time Cohen sat her papers.
The most interesting part of this story? That her achievement has been reported as an extraordinary mental feat. When what she did physically was a million times more impressive.
“I was sitting in a hospital room in my gown, attached to a catheter. It was painful,” she said.
First in English? No sweat. Sitting on a chair for three hours? Give this person a medal.
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) purge of his most senior general is driven by his effort to both secure “total control” of his military and root out corruption, US Ambassador to China David Perdue said told Bloomberg Television yesterday. The probe into Zhang Youxia (張又俠), Xi’s second-in-command, announced over the weekend, is a “major development,” Perdue said, citing the family connections the vice chair of China’s apex military commission has with Xi. Chinese authorities said Zhang was being investigated for suspected serious discipline and law violations, without disclosing further details. “I take him at his word that there’s a corruption effort under
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
RSS