Parenting appears to have an anti-aging effect on parents’ future brains.
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The “baby brain” phenomenon (a term used to describe the mental fog some people experience during pregnancy and early parenting) suggests that having children has a negative effect on the brain. However, the parent-child relationship may actually protect both the mother’s and father’s brains from age-related decline, and this effect increases with each child.
In the UK Biobank study, researchers compared MRI scans of more than 37,000 adults aged 40 to 70 in the largest ever study of parental brain function.
Source: www.newscientist.com
