Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton NJ 08544, USA.
Trends Neurosci. 2010 Oct;33(10):465-73. doi: 10.1016/j.tins.2010.07.003.
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.
正如任何一位新手父母所知道的，有了孩子会带来丰富的体验、学习机会和压力——这些经历已知会改变成年人的大脑。然而，人们对母亲经验的影响，甚至对父亲经验的影响，知之甚少，这些经验对与育儿不直接相关的神经回路没有影响。在这里，我们讨论了照顾和随之而来的体验和激素变化如何影响海马体和前额叶皮层，这些大脑区域与认知和情绪调节有关。更好地了解育儿如何影响大脑，可能有助于制定治疗父母抑郁的策略，因为这种情况会对孩子的认知和心理健康产生严重后果。
