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.
They found that parents with more children tended to have stronger connectivity in key brain networks, especially those involved in movement and sensation. These same networks typically show decreased connectivity as people age.
"We're seeing a widespread pattern of functional alterations, where a higher number of children parented is associated with increased functional connectivity across somatosensory and motor networks," Holmes said.
The effect appears to be cumulative: The more children parents had, the stronger the brain differences appeared.
The findings challenge assumptions that having children primarily creates stress and strain. Instead, the research suggests parenting may provide a form of environmental enrichment that could benefit brain health through increased physical activity, social interaction and cognitive stimulation.
"The caregiving environment, rather than pregnancy alone, appears important since we see these effects in both mothers and fathers," Holmes said.
Parents in the study also showed higher levels of social connection, with more frequent family visits and larger social networks.
However, the researchers caution that more work is needed to understand exactly how parenting creates these brain changes. The study participants were primarily from the United Kingdom, so the findings may not generalize to all cultures and family structures.
The research could have implications beyond traditional parent-child relationships.
"If what we're picking up is a relationship between enhanced social interactions and social support that comes about through having increased numbers of children in your life, then that means that we could tap into those same processes even if individuals don't have a social support network currently," Holmes said.
