My wife and I both took our Professional Engineering Exams (8 hour test that is brutally hard) and she was 6 mo pregnant and still passed while I failed. I really feel dumb now.
How does this research imply that there's any effect on a pregnant woman/new mother's ability to take a PE exam? The study talks about a gray matter reduction in small areas of the brain associated with social interaction. Based on other experiments, they further theorized that this may be a tool to help the mother quickly recognize her infant and assess its needs. Has nothing to do with engineering...
It doesn't. I poorly skimmed it too quickly. She probably had 20+ coworkers tell her she would fail due to pregnancy-brain though, so it was nice to see her pass lol.