In May last year I posted that ‘pregnancy brain changes are beneficial, fine-tuned, positive and adaptive’. Recently David King asked: ‘does not pregnancy in women also change the mindset in men, prospective fathers?’ This was my reply:
The changes in ‘mindset’ in mothers are associated with and largely due to changes in the mother’s brain. There has been less research on brain changes in new fathers but there is evidence that fathers’ brains change in the same areas as mothers – areas particularly affecting visual processing, attention and empathy – including ‘theory of mind’ functions – guessing what another person is thinking or feeling. These changes in fathers are roughly half the changes that mothers experience. They also appear to be related to the amount of care that the father provides – not as the cause of that care but the result of that care: ‘experience induced brain plasticity’. This is similar to the changes found in violinists or London cabdrivers related to the particular functions developed in association with their tasks. This evidence is not as well developed as the evidence for changes in mothers’ brains.