Want to Keep Your Brain Young? Research Says Have Children

A recent study in the UK, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has put forward an interesting analysis of how having children is the best way to slow down your brain aging or to keep your Brain young.

It has been called one of the largest studies on parental brain function to date, and it involved 37,000 adults.

The study underlines how having children can improve a person's life over time by presenting much-needed social connection, physical activity, and cognitive stimulation, even with parenting challenges such as stress and fatigue. 

Most of the studies on parenthood do not include fathers as they don’t physically bear the child's birth, but this study had around 17,000 men.

As per the study, fathers' brain health is greatly impacted by children, even though they are not physically involved in the pregnancy, childbirth, or childbearing process. 

Parenting may present protection against functional brain aging, as these same networks portrayed decreased functional connectivity linked to increasing age. Both men and women experience this effect, which is linked to the caregiving environment rather than just pregnancy.

It appeared that the more children one has, the better the impact said Avram Holmes, a professor of psychiatry at the Rutgers Center for Advanced Human Brain Imaging Research, the study's lead author.

The study analyzed the link between the number of children parented and age on brain function in 17,607 males and 19,964 females from the UK Biobank. In both females and males, parenthood was positively linked with functional connectivity, such that a higher number of children parented was associated with higher connectivity, especially within the somato/motor network.

Based on Neuroimaging, Holmes says that the spatial topography of parenthood-linked effects was inversely associated with the impact of age on functional connectivity across the brain for both females and males, such that the connections that were positively associated with the number of children were negatively correlated with age

The findings collectively suggested that the changes that come with parenthood might improve brain health throughout life, changing aging patterns. Animal models of parenthood and preliminary studies that indicate "younger-looking" brain structure in human parents are consistent with this.

Scientists have also highlighted the necessity for additional research to ascertain how parenting can prevent the aging of the brain. The consequences could be extensive and aid researchers in the fight against dementia and loneliness in an elderly society, particularly as fewer people are having children these days.

References

1. Orchard, Edwina R., Sidhant Chopra, Leon Q. Ooi, Pansheng Chen, Lijun An, Sharna D. Jamadar, B. T. Yeo, Helena J. Rutherford, and Avram J. Holmes. "Protective Role of Parenthood on Age-related Brain Function in Mid- to Late-life." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences122, no. 9 (2025): e2411245122. Accessed March 18, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2411245122

(Input from various sources)

(Rehash/Dr Lakshmisahithi Tanneru/MSM)