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We know that mothers go through multiple physical and psychological changes after birth (and before) including change in brain structures. That may sound surprising to the uninitiated — and it is fascinating. But that has been reasonably well researched.
What, however, has not been well researched, barely at all is that of the father. There have been some psychological studies showing that men do become more caring, but also that their testosterone does also drop. Presumably to help prime the body and brain for more caring — though I reported previously on the complicated role of testosterone.
But is this matched by changes in the brain — here at leading brains we know that if there is a behavioural change there will be a biological, brain, change. And this is precisely what a group of Spanish and US researchers around Magdalena Martínez-García have found out and described in a recently published paper.
The findings are interesting also because they do not show change to some regions we might expect. For example, in mothers changes in the brain limbic regions has been noted. This region is considered our emotional centre so unsurprising. But this region did not seem to change in fresh fathers.
What was, however, seen are small changes in the prefrontal regions, particularly in areas that are associated with something called the default…
