While recent studies show that pregnancy and childbirth positively alter the brain chemistry of mothers, could parenting have a similar impact on men?

The 2005 book The Mommy Brain documented research by Craig Kinsley and Kelly Lambert on female rats who were either pregnant or recent mothers, showing that motherhood sharpened their senses and increased their motivation and resilience. Susan Kuchinskas reports for Miller-McCune that this same team is now concentrating on fathers. Their research on mice, along with similar studies on monkeys and humans, suggests that fatherhood chemically alters men to make them better fathers.

“Loving a woman and fathering her children changes a man’s body and brain in ways that make him more canny and resourceful,” Kuchinskas writes, “while improving his ability to handle stress. At the same time, living with the woman he loves alters a man’s hormones and neurochemistry to make him a better mate.”

Examples in nature include: the California deer mouse, who stays around the home after mating to groom and look after his kids; the male marmoset, whose hormones cause him to gain weight along with his mate during pregnancy; and, the “highly monogamous” titi monkey, who mates for life and allows his offspring to cling to his body.

In humans, studies have found that married men have lower levels of the hormone testosterone, while new fathers exhibit higher levels of prolactin. Both of these conditions positively influence a father’s parenting skills by increasing his sympathy and motivation to help his offspring.

Interestingly, a study by the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center suggests that lower testosterone could actually be triggered by a newborn baby’s smell. Scientists at the center separated marmoset fathers from their families and then exposed them to scent from their babies’ genitals. Within 20 minutes, their testosterone levels dropped.

Image by  Michelleannb , licensed under  Creative Commons .

Source: Miller-McCune

With 40 percent of the world’s 7,000 languages in danger of extinction, the recording of endangered languages is becoming ever more important to linguistic research.  Anthony Kaufman previews for Seed the documentary The Linguists, which examines the global issue of language endangerment and loss.  This PBS documentary features researchers K. David Harrison and Greg Anderson of the nonprofit Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, who are on a mission to locate speakers of rare languages and record them.  Harrison and Anderson are amassing an online dictionary of remote languages, which includes sound files of native speakers.  Interestingly, Anderson also cites technology like Youtube, text messaging, and chat rooms as increasingly popular ways for communities to share and thereby preserve endangered languages.

Sources: Seed, PBS, Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages

The first proton beam whizzed around the Large Hadron Collider track today, far underground, beneath the Swiss-Franco border. “Like first light in a telescope, the first beam in the particle accelerator is a landmark moment for a program that has spanned more than 20 years and involved tens of thousands of scientists,” reports Wired News.

The track is the world’s largest, spanning 17 miles, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Scientists won’t get busy with the good stuff—smashing atoms!—for several weeks, but when they do, many predict discoveries that will revolutionize physics, even our basic understanding of the world. Wired does a heck of a breakdown.

Other predictions for the outcome of the high-energy collisions haven’t been nearly as rosy. Doomsday scenarios include the creation of mini black holes and “dark matter” particles called strangelets. Even though independent reviews have deemed the planned experiments safe, my friend still thinks we should probably be throwing an end-of-the-world party come mid-October. I’m inclined to agree. No RSVP necessary, just check HasTheLargeHadronColliderDestroyedTheWorldYet.com before heading over.