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

When Marian Sandmaier heard the sounds of strange young women’s voices in her front hallway, she dove for the floor, crept upstairs, and hid in her bedroom. What would cause this perfectly functional, successful, and outwardly confident adult to run from her daughter’s friends in a spasm of anxiety?

In this month’s Psychotherapy Networker, Sandmaier explores the lifelong power of one’s temperament. For many years, modern clinicians rejected the idea that one’s temperament was inborn. However, a long-term study by Harvard researcher Jerome Kagan, along with the work of various behavioral molecular geneticists, suggests that our natural inclinations may be hard-wired into our DNA.

Kagan’s study of over 400 children from infancy into young adulthood revealed that roughly half of those who were prone to anxiety, or "high-reactors," shed their early shyness and transformed into extroverted talkers around the age of 15. However, when studied more closely, Kagan found that these seemingly transformed individuals still maintained the same neurological reactions to stress that they exhibited as toddlers. They simply got better at overcompensating for it.

For someone like Sandmaier, who has managed to overcome innate introversion to build a successful career and healthy relationships with others, this means that although she has managed to cultivate a functional “persona” that enables her to navigate the myriad pathways of public life, her “anima”, or private reality, has remained unchanged.

Source: Psychotherapy Networker

Do Facebook users get lower grades than non-Facebook users? The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Ohio State University doctoral student Aryn C. Karpinski surveyed 102 undergraduates and 117 graduates and found that the GPA’s of non-Facebook users were higher than their Facebook-loving peers.

Karpinski’s findings immediately generated controversy from fellow academics, who questioned her methods and Karpinski readily acknowledges that she cannot prove a direct correlation between Facebook use and poor academic performance. Instead, she argues that her study proves the need for further research on this issue.

“I completely acknowledge the limitations of my research,” she says. “What I found is so exploratory—people need to chill out.”

Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education (article not available online)

  Image by avlxyz, licensed under Creative Commons

Virtual settings allow preteens to try on a variety of personas—they can be athletes or bookworms, preppy or punk, female or male. A recent study by psychologist Sandra Calvert suggests that, despite this opportunity to create a new identity from scratch, the behavior of a child’s avatar tends to stay true to the child’s real-world self.

Calvert and her team studied pairs of fifth graders, having them create avatars and play with one another in a multi-user domain (MUD). About 11 percent of boys and 32 percent of girls experimented with gender-bending, or choosing an avatar of the opposite sex. These opposite-sex avatars, however, still showed play preferences and behavior consistent with the users’ biological sex. Boys largely preferred action-oriented play, while girls opted for typed conversations.

The fact that these behavior styles continued to hold in the virtual realm suggests that MUD play functions like real-world play in providing a space for self-exploration and discovery. And, as in real-world play, social norms such as gender roles can color this self-exploration. Psychologist Kaveri Subrahmanyam concludes, “People don’t go online to leave their bodies behind and find new selves, but instead seem to be taking their offline selves, including their biological selves, with them.”

Source: Science News

Photo by Dan Taylor, licensed under Creative Commons.

There’s a scientific explanation for why people love donuts at the office. A study recently published in Psychosomatic Medicine reveals that “knowledge-based work” causes people to eat much more than normal, even though their brains are technically performing at the same level of activity as if they were just sitting around. The researchers behind the study offer two possible explanations: One is that eating stabilizes blood glucose levels, which the brain relies on heavily. As evidence, the researchers show that glucose levels change when performing knowledge-based work. The other explanation is that knowledge-based work increases stress, and it’s well-documented that stress leads to increased appetite. Either way, it’s probably a good idea to keep the Snickers out of reach as deadlines approach.

(Image courtesy of Eyedropper, licensed under Creative Commons) 

Self-awareness doesn’t appear in the human consciousness until people are about 18 months old. Psychologists have determined this using a “mirror test” where a baby is placed in front of a mirror with a red dot his or her forehead. Early in life, babies will show no signs of recognizing their reflections in the mirror. Then, around 18 months, the babies will touch their foreheads or show some other signs of recognition. Psychologists believe the test shows when the child becomes aware of itself.

Later in life, self-awareness takes on a paramount significance in many people’s lives. People go on trips to “find themselves.” After breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, people have been known to say, “I finally feel like myself again.”

This process of finding one’s self can be painful, according to an article by Karen Wright in the latest issue of Psychology Today. Many people try to mask inauthenticity with “cosmetic surgery, psychopharmaceuticals, and perpetual makeovers.” According to Stephen Cope, author of Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, “[p]eople feel profoundly like they're not living from who they really are, their authentic self, their deepest possibility in the world. The result is a sense of near-desperation.”

Although it can be hard work, there are real psychological benefits to self-recognition. Wright reports, “[a]uthenticity is correlated with many aspects of psychological well-being, including vitality, self-esteem, and coping skills” The other option—a life unexamined—often leads to anxiety or depression. It’s like the old joke: “You can never hide from yourself, because no matter where you go, there you are.”

 Image by Justin Donnelly, licensed under Creative Commons.

Children just 3 months old prefer to look at people with similar skin color to their own. Babies also prefer people with similar accents and who speak the same language as they do. In fact, if a child is offered food from two people—one who speaks the baby’s language and the other who does not—the child will prefer the food offered by the native speaker. These innate preferences are being uncovered by a Harvard research team led by Elizabeth Spelke, profiled in the British newspaper Telegraph. Some hope that these discoveries will eventually able to reduce or eliminate racial prejudice, but before that can happen, Spelke says, “we have a great deal more to learn.”

(Thanks, 3 Quarks Daily.)

—Bennett Gordon

Image by Dean Johnson, licensed under Creative Commons.