Despite the growing participation of males in parentingThere is still little research on how fatherhood affects menand even less about the biological and brain changes that they imply.
As happens when exercising any new skill, the experience of take care of a child can leave marks on the brain, explained researchers Darby Saxbe (University of Southern California) and Magdalena Martínez García (Gregorio Marañón Health Research Institute in Madrid) to the site The conversation.
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It’s what neuroscientists call “experience induced plasticity”. The changes that occur when we learn a new language or master a musical instrument also occur when experiencing the cognitive, physical, and emotional demands of caring for a newborn.
In an experiment between those institutions, the brains of 20 men in California and 20 in Madrid were studied by MRI during the pregnancy of their partners and when the baby I was already six months old. The conclusions were significant: in both cases changes were noted in the regions associated with visual processing, attention, and empathy.
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The degree of acquired plasticity was associated with the amount and frequency in interactions with children. Thus, Spanish parents, who usually have better licenses than Americans, show more profound changes in the regions related to goal-directed attention, which could help to better understand the signals that their children give.
These findings contributed to national and international funding agencies beginning to prioritize research on the males conforming to fathersthe article warns.
Future findings could be decisive when making decisions about care policieswhile diverse family configurations go through a permanent revolution.
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