title: Parenting and plasticity.
abstract: As any new parent knows, having a baby provides opportunities for enrichment, learning and stress - experiences known to change the adult brain. Yet surprisingly little is known about the effects of maternal experience, and even less about the effects of paternal experience, on neural circuitry not directly involved in parenting. Here we discuss how caregiving and the accompanying experiential and hormonal changes influence the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, brain regions involved in cognition and mood regulation. A better understanding of how parenting impacts the brain is likely to help in devising strategies for treating parental depression, a condition that can have serious cognitive and mental health consequences for children.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08544, USA.
authors.forename: Benedetta
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Leuner
authors.forename: Erica R
authors.initials: ER
authors.lastname: Glasper
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gould
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D003071:Cognition; D003863:Depression / Q000378:metabolism*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000378:metabolism; D006728:Hormones / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology*; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000378:metabolism; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D006728:Hormones