THE ESSENTIAL
- In France, 753,000 babies were born in 2019 according to INSEE.
- The average age of French mothers at the birth of their first child was 28.5 in 2015.
What happens in men’s brains when they become dads? It is to this question that a recent study, published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, wanted to answer. According to the researchers’ findings, expectant fathers undergo brain and biological changes to psychologically adapt to the birth of their child. In particular, they would lose gray matter.
Reduced gray matter
To reach this conclusion, the scientists studied a group of 20 participating fathers, whom they followed before and following the birth of their first child. They then compared this group to the so-called control group, made up of 17 childless men.
Thus, they observed that the cortical volume of the fathers, that is to say the gray matter, had decreased when they became fathers. This was also the case for the thickness and for the cortical and subcortical surface – which concerns the regions of the brain located below the cerebral cortex layer – of the young dads.
A phenomenon already observed in women
A similar link had already been proven in women. According to a study published in 2016 in the journal Nature Neurosciences, pregnancy induces important changes in the brain structure and function of the future mother. The goal, here too, is to prepare the woman for the care of her baby.
In detail, the results show that women who had just had their first child had a decrease in gray matter in brain regions associated with social skills. But is this bad news? No way, according to Elseline Hoekzema, one of the authors : “A loss of gray matter volume may also represent a beneficial process of maturation or specialization“in the brain.
Which only lasts two years
The decrease in gray matter is not a lasting phenomenon. According to what has been proven in women, this reduction only lasted two years following the delivery of the first child… But not in all areas. In the hippocampus, a region associated with memory, the researchers observed that the recovery was partial.
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