Parents’ brains may be getting an unexpected benefit from raising children: protection against some effects of aging, according to a new study of nearly 37,000 adults. The research from Rutgers Health and Yale University, published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, found that parents show patterns of brain connectivity that directly oppose typical age-related changes, with the effect strengthening with each additional child.
The finding held for both mothers and fathers, suggesting the benefits come from the experience of parenting rather than biological changes from pregnancy. “The regions that decrease in functional connectivity as individuals age are the regions associated with increased connectivity when individuals have had children,” said senior study author Avram Holmes, associate professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and core faculty member of the Rutgers Brain Health Institute and the Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research.
The research analyzed brain scans and family information from the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research source. The analysis showed how different brain regions communicate with each other. The team focused particularly on areas involved in movement, sensation and social connection. To read the full story.