Jodi Pawluski
Neuroscientist, psychotherapist and researcher
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Through Psychology and Mother
Early life and education
Jodi Pawluski is originally from British Columbia, Canada. She graduated from Seaton High School in 1995. She earned a bachelor's degree in biopsychology from the University of British Columbia, followed by a master's degree in psychology from the University of Toronto in 2003. She completed her PhD in neuroscience at the University of British Columbia in 2007. At the university, she worked in the laboratory of Liisa Galea. In 2019, she obtained a habilitation degree in life sciences at the University of Rennes in France.
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Career
Pawluski's research focuses on understanding the maternal brain. In 2020, she started a podcast called Mommy Brain Revisited, which focuses on bringing current research on the parental brain to the general public. Since 2020 she has been counselling mothers.
In her 2023 paper in JAMA Neurology, titled "It's Time to Rebrand "Mommy Brain", Pawluski emphasizes the importance of educating mothers about real brain changes that occur in early motherhood, and highlights the need to challenge the myth that memory changes during pregnancy are inherently negative or signs of dysfunction. While pregnant women in her studies often reported memory issues, objective testing revealed improved performance on tasks related to their babies. In addition, her research found that pregnant women exhibited enhanced long-term memory. She explains the idea of the "mommy brain" as a societal construct, noting that because mothers are expected to be perfect, even minor lapses are more likely to be noticed and attributed to cognitive decline.
In 2022, Pawluski authored Mommy Brain: Découvrez les fabuleux pouvoirs du cerveau des mères ! published in French by Editions Larousse, and the following year it was translated into English.
Other roles
Pawluski is on the editorial board of the International Marcé Society's official journal Archives of Women's Mental Health.