Of mice and men ... study confirms importance of paternal care for children's brain development

Well I guess we've always known it but now scientists have confirmed that fathers are important for the development and stimulation of baby's brain. A research study done at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany investigated the brain development of rodent offspring in response to maternal or paternal separation. If you do give a rats .... read the whole paper - WARNING, this is literally brain surgery!

Why this study undertaken by Wladimir Ovtscharoff Jr., et al at the Department of Zoology / Developmental Neurobiology is relevant for dads (well rodent dads anyway) is best summarised by the following sentence in the abstract of their paper:

"Our results query the general assumption that a father has less impact on the synaptic maturation of his offspring's brain than the mother."

The rest of the paper is pretty much unreadable for people not actively involved in brain research ... or maybe it's just me. Either way - isn't that an interesting study! Having a dad-rat around as well as a mum-rat helps the baby-rat develop its brain! Yup and father-deprived baby-rats have a reduced symmetric innervation in the cingulate cortex!

Whether the results are transferrable to humans - who knows? Since repeating the same study on humans is out of question (read the paper if you must know) and humans are a different species altogether (despite the rat race) we will just have to trust our instincts for the time being. Mine tells me having both parents around is a good thing (for my baby's brain).

I guess I've only been a dad for 4.5 months but I can already see how our little boy interacts differently with me and his mum. Also, I tend to do different things with him. I think even the sheer diversity of interaction helps him develop. Obviously it's not always possible to have both mum and dad around for all children but surely we can make sure that children have access to male and female adults as they grow up.

-Stef