Mums pregnant with boys may be less forgetful

In recent blog entries I reported that:
- I am fairly convinced Bump will turn out to be a girl,
- Hayley has become very forgetful in late pregnancy.
So this article (originally from Reuters) which Hayley came across yesterday in "Pregnancy, baby and you" magazine made us smile.

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Reuters
Dateline: Vancouver, British Columbia - Mothers pregnant with boys may be less forgetful than those carrying girls, Canadian researchers said on Tuesday.

The researchers said they found evidence that women who gave birth to boys consistently outperformed moms of girls in tests that specifically taxed memory in areas of listening, computational and visualization skills.

"When we set out to look at the effects of pregnancy on cognition, we weren't thinking of the sex of the fetus, so we were shocked by our results," said study leader Neil Watson, a Simon Fraser University psychology professor.

Watson said the results suggest that an "unknown fetal-derived factor" that differs between male and female fetuses may have an influence on the mother's cognition.

The researchers' findings will be published in the May 12 findings of the journal NeuroReport. (:/)