Having children appears to prevent brain ageing, going by a study of around 37,000 people carried out by scientists at Rutgers University in the United States.
In a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the US, the researchers explained they had found that parenthood plays a "protective role" when it comes to "age-related brain function in mid- to late-life."
And when it comes to having children and keeping your brain young, the more the better is the message: "Parenting more children is associated with higher brain-wide functional connectivity, especially in networks associated with movement and sensation," the team said, suggesting a "cumulative" effect based on family size.
"These same networks showed lower functional connectivity associated with higher age, suggesting that parenthood might protect against functional brain aging," they explained, after looking into information covering almost 20,000 women and over 17,000 men taken from the UK Biobank, a health and medical database.
"A higher number of children is associated with patterns of brain function in the opposite direction to age-related alterations," the researchers added, suggesting that the findings "indicate that the changes accompanying parenthood may confer benefits to brain health across the lifespan, altering ageing trajectories."
"The caregiving environment, rather than pregnancy alone, appears important since we see these effects in both mothers and fathers," said Rutgers’ Avram Holmes. – dpa
