ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2023
First-time fathers show longitudinal gray matter cortical volume reductions: evidence from two international samples.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- Maternal Neuroplasticity: Understanding Brain Changes with Perinatal Depression and Anxiety in Women.Current psychiatry reports · 2026Review
- The paternal brain: longitudinal insights into structural and functional plasticity and attachment over 24 weeks postpartum.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Traces of Parenthood but Not Pregnancy Loss in UK Biobank Structural Brain MRI Data.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- A holistic review of fatherhood in humans and non-human animals: mechanisms of fatherhood, effects on fathers themselves, and interactions of fathers with others.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Review
- Inter- and intra-individual differences in brain sex map to neuroendocrine profiles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Did Down-Regulated Instincts Enable Human Gene-Culture Coevolution?Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- Male caregiving experience alters hippocampal neuroplasticity and transcription independent of reproduction in a biparental species.Communications biology · 2025Article
- My Baby Versus the World: Fathers' Neural Processing of Own-Infant, Unfamiliar-Infant, and Romantic Partner Stimuli.Human brain mapping · 2025Article
- Leveraging research into sex differences and steroid hormones to improve brain health.Nature reviews. Endocrinology · 2025Review
- Protective role of parenthood on age-related brain function in mid- to late-life.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Pregnancy entails a U-shaped trajectory in human brain structure linked to hormones and maternal attachment.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Enduring maternal brain changes and their role in mediating motherhood's impact on well-being.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Cortical volume reductions in men transitioning to first-time fatherhood reflect both parenting engagement and mental health risk.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Recalibration of the stress response system over adult development: Is there a perinatal recalibration period?Development and psychopathology · 2023Review
- Prenatal prolactin predicts postnatal parenting attitudes and brain structure remodeling in first-time fathers.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2023Article
- Why and How to Account for Sex and Gender in Brain and Behavioral Research.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Parental experience is linked with lower vasopressin receptor 1a binding and decreased postpartum androgens in titi monkeys.Journal of neuroendocrinology · 2023Article
- Matrescence: lifetime impact of motherhood on cognition and the brain.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Emerging evidence points to the transition to parenthood as a critical window for adult neural plasticity. Studying fathers offers a unique opportunity to explore how parenting experience can shape the human brain when pregnancy is not directly experienced. Yet very few studies have examined the neuroanatomic adaptations of men transitioning into fatherhood. The present study reports on an international collaboration between two laboratories, one in Spain and the other in California (United States), that have prospectively collected structural neuroimaging data in 20 expectant fathers before and after the birth of their first child. The Spanish sample also included a control group of 17 childless men. We tested whether the transition into fatherhood entailed anatomical changes in brain cortical volume, thickness, and area, and subcortical volumes. We found overlapping trends of cortical volume reductions within the default mode network and visual networks and preservation of subcortical structures across both samples of first-time fathers, which persisted after controlling for fathers' and children's age at the postnatal scan. This study provides convergent evidence for cortical structural changes in fathers, supporting the possibility that the transition to fatherhood may represent a meaningful window of experience-induced structural neuroplasticity in males.
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What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.