Dr. Darby Saxbe

And we kind of become canalized along certain pathways.

And so where you see volume reductions are in what's called the mentalizing network.

And that's the part of the brain that helps us think about other people's minds.

And it's considered kind of a seat of empathy.

And so you see some kind of shrinkage and streamlining in those areas when you compare

expectant moms and early postpartum moms, as well as expectant dads and early postpartum dads, you seem to be seeing this shrinkage across the transition to parenthood.

What it looks like from some of the newest studies of moms is there's also a rebound effect.

So it's really like a U-shaped pattern of change.

And that's likely what we'll see in dads as well, but we're still doing the longitudinal studies to kind of look at that time course in dad's

over months and years.

Yeah, so they might feel like they're more able to focus on understanding what a new baby might be thinking or feeling.

And so they're sort of honing their ability to essentially bond with a new baby.

And that's what the research seems to be telling us, that when the brain changes more, and this is true in studies of both mothers and fathers,

there is better bonding.

So that these brain changes, which appear to be really normative in pregnant and newly postpartum women, and a little more variable and experience dependent in dads, these changes are kind of supporting the construction of a

healthy parent-child bond.

And that's probably due to that increased sensitivity and understanding of what a baby needs.

Yeah.

So actually, one of the best studies of this was done in the Philippines by Lee Gettler, who's a researcher at Notre Dame.

And he had a very large kind of population-level cohort of men who he followed from pre-parenthood, so starting in their late teens, early 20s.