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Fatherhood May Alter the Brain
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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 The researchers also found that the brains of marmoset fathers had more receptors for a hormone known as vasopressin, a neuropeptide. That means their brains could process more of this chemical than the brains of non-dads.
Vasopressin is strongly connected to parental behavior, the researchers added. In humans, the hormone -- produced in the pituitary gland -- is crucial for learning and memory.
In essence, then, "the experience of being a father dramatically alters brain regions important for cognition," Kozorovitskiy said.
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According to Levine, it's not yet clear how these changes came about in the marmoset brains. "Do these changes mediate some aspect of paternal behavior, or are they secondary to physical or hormonal changes that may occur as a consequence of the behavior?" he asked. "Cause and effect still need to be explored."
And, of course, researchers would like to know if there are similar effects in human fathers. For now, though, "these are primates that exhibit paternal behavior, which is about as close to human relevance that you are going to get with an experimental animal," Levine said.
More information
For fatherhood facts, see the National Fatherhood Initiative (www.fatherhood.org ).
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Copyright © 2006 ScoutNews LLC. All rights reserved.
Last updated 8/24/2006
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SOURCES: Jon E. Levine, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology and physiology, Northwestern University, Chicago; Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, graduate student, neuroscience, Princeton University, Princeton, N.,J.; September 2006 Nature Neuroscience
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