Parenting!
Did you know that parenting affects your brain? No, I don’t mean the insanity you inherit from your kids (which, of course, is true).
Wrote authors in an article published last week in Nature Communications, “Mapping the Effects of Pregnancy on Resting State Brain Activity, White Matter Microstructure, Neural Metabolite Concentrations and Grey Matter Architecture”:
There are selective pregnancy-related modifications in brain structure and function that may facilitate peripartum maternal processes of key relevance to the mother-infant dyad.”
I.e., Pregnancy remodels the maternal brain to facilitate maternal-fetal bonding, nesting behavior and the physiological responsiveness to infant cues.
Commented Brain Tomorrow:
The brain changes were so pronounced that an algorithm could easily differentiate the brain of a woman who had gone through a pregnancy from that of a woman with no children.”
That’s something.
What about fathers? Any changes after the babies arrive? Or do they blithely continue their coffee-imbibing, football-watching, chips-consuming, office-politicking lifestyle, with no thought whatsoever to wives or kids?
Apparently, there are changes in dad-brains. Or so saith scientists from the University of Southern California and the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón in Madrid, in “First-Time Fathers Show Longitudinal Gray Matter Cortical Volume Reductions,” also published recently, in Cerebral Cortex.
They recruited 40 men—20 in Spain and 20 in California—and put each one into an MRI scanner twice: first during their partner’s pregnancy, and again after their baby was 6 months old. Controls were 17 childless men.
Well, their brain volumes decreased.
Before you get carried away with this factoid, I want you to know that the pregnancy-related brain changes in mothers also was associated with brain volume reduction. So this is no stupid-dad joke. Such volume decreases are a function of brain remodeling, not diminution of intelligence or such.
We found several significant changes in the brains of fathers from prenatal to postpartum that did not emerge within the childless men we followed across the same time period. In both the Spanish and Californian samples, fathers’ brain changes appeared in regions of the cortex that contribute to visual processing, attention and empathy toward the baby.”
Compared to mothers, fathers’ brain changes were more subtle, only about half the magnitude of the changes observed in first-time mothers, perhaps reflecting the fathers’ level of interaction with their new babies. In that regard, they found that Spanish fathers, who, on average, have more generous paternity leaves than fathers have in the U.S., displayed more pronounced changes in brain regions that support goal-directed attention, which may help fathers attune to their infants’ cues, compared with Californian fathers.
This finding raises the question of whether family policies that boost how much time dads spend on infant care during the early postpartum period may help support the development of the fathering brain.”
In any case, it is extremely gratifying and reassuring to know that God is the ultimate Parent, whose brain changeth not, and whose compassions they fail not, and who is the same, yesterday, today, and forever!
“As one whom his mother comforts, so I [God] will comfort you.”
Isaiah 66:13
“Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.”
Isaiah 49:15
You, Yahweh, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is Your name.
Isaiah 63:16
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; ….
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father ….
Isaiah 9:6
SOURCES: Brain Tomorrow; Nature Communications; Cerebral Cortex
Abe Kuruvilla is the Carl E. Bates Professor of Christian Preaching at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville, KY), and a dermatologist in private practice. His passion is to explore, explain, and exemplify preaching.