How paternity can help keep your brain young

Parents’ brains can be obtaining an unexpected benefit by raising children: protection against some effects of aging, according to a new study of almost 37,000 adults.

He investigation by Rutgers Health and Yale University, published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of SciencesThey discovered that parents show brain connectivity patterns that are directly opposed to the typical age -related changes, with the strengthening effect with each additional child.

The finding held for both mothers and fathers, which suggests that the benefits come from the experience of parenting instead of the biological changes of pregnancy.

“The regions that decrease in functional connectivity as individuals age are the regions associated with greater connectivity when individuals have had children,” said the Senior study author Avram HolmesAssociate Professor of Psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine Robert Wood Johnson and member of the Faculty of Core del Rutgers Brain Health Institute and the Brain Brain Advanced Image Research Center.

The investigation analyzed the brain scans and family information of the United Kingdom biobank, a large -scale biomedical database and a research source. The analysis showed how different regions of the brain communicate with each other. The team focused particularly on areas involved in movement, sensation and social connection.

They discovered that parents with more children tended to have a stronger connectivity in key brain networks, especially those involved in movement and sensation. These same networks generally show a decrease in connectivity as people age.

“We are seeing a generalized pattern of functional alterations, where a greater number of unemployed children is associated with greater functional connectivity through somatosensory and motor networks,” said Holmes.

The effect seems to be cumulative: the more children the parents had, the strongest brain differences appeared.

The findings challenge the assumptions that having children mainly creates stress and tension. On the other hand, research suggests that the raising of children can provide a form of environmental enrichment that could benefit the health of the brain through greater physical activity, social interaction and cognitive stimulation.

“The care atmosphere, instead of pregnancy alone, seems important since we see these effects on both mothers and fathers,” said Holmes.

Parents in the study also showed higher levels of social connection, with more frequent family visits and larger social networks.

However, researchers warn that more work is needed to understand exactly how parenting creates these brain changes. Study participants were mainly from the United Kingdom, so findings may not generalize to all family cultures and structures.

Research could have implications beyond traditional relationships for parents and children.

“If what we are collecting is a relationship between improved social interactions and social support that occurs by having a greater number of children in their lives, that means we could take advantage of those same processes, even if people do not have a network of Social support today, ”said Holmes.