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Parity is associated with cognitive function and brain age in both females and males.

ABSTRACT: Previous studies of the association between parity and long-term cognitive changes have primarily focused on women and have shown conflicting results. We investigated this association by analyzing data collected on 303,196 subjects from the UK Biobank. We found that in both females and males, having offspring was associated with a faster response time and fewer mistakes made in the visual memory task. Subjects with two or three children had the largest differences relative to those who were childless, with greater effects observed in men. We further analyzed the association between parity and relative brain age (n?=?13,584), a brain image-based biomarker indicating how old one's brain structure appears relative to peers. We found that in both sexes, subjects with two or three offspring had significantly reduced brain age compared to those without offspring, corroborating our cognitive function results. Our findings suggest that lifestyle factors accompanying having offspring, rather than the physical process of pregnancy experienced only by females, contribute to these associations and underscore the importance of studying such factors, particularly in the context of sex.

SUBMITTER: Ning K

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7142076 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Parity is associated with cognitive function and brain age in both females and males.

Ning Kaida K Zhao Lu L Franklin Meredith M Matloff Will W Batta Ishaan I Arzouni Nibal N Sun Fengzhu F Toga Arthur W AW

Scientific reports 20200408 1

Previous studies of the association between parity and long-term cognitive changes have primarily focused on women and have shown conflicting results. We investigated this association by analyzing data collected on 303,196 subjects from the UK Biobank. We found that in both females and males, having offspring was associated with a faster response time and fewer mistakes made in the visual memory task. Subjects with two or three children had the largest differences relative to those who were chil ...[more]

PMID: 32269255

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Project description:Animals exhibit diverse dispersal strategies, including sex-biased dispersal, a phenomenon common in vertebrates. Dispersal influences the genetic structure of populations as well as geographic variation in phenotypic traits. Patterns of spatial genetic structure and geographic variation may vary between the sexes whenever males and females exhibit different dispersal behaviors. Here, we examine dispersal, spatial genetic structure, and spatial acoustic structure in Rufous-and-white Wrens, a year-round resident tropical bird. Both sexes sing in this species, allowing us to compare acoustic variation between males and females and examine the relationship between dispersal and song sharing for both sexes. Using a long-term dataset collected over an 11-year period, we used banding data and molecular genetic analyses to quantify natal and breeding dispersal distance in Rufous-and-white Wrens. We quantified song sharing and examined whether sharing varied with dispersal distance, for both males and females. Observational data and molecular genetic analyses indicate that dispersal is female-biased. Females dispersed farther from natal territories than males, and more often between breeding territories than males. Furthermore, females showed no significant spatial genetic structure, consistent with expectations, whereas males showed significant spatial genetic structure. Overall, natal dispersal appears to have more influence than breeding dispersal on spatial genetic structure and spatial acoustic structure, given that the majority of breeding dispersal events resulted in individuals moving only short distances. Song sharing between pairs of same-sex animals decreases with the distance between their territories for both males and females, although males exhibited significantly greater song sharing than females. Lastly, we measured the relationship between natal dispersal distance and song sharing. We found that sons shared fewer songs with their fathers the farther they dispersed from their natal territories, but that song sharing between daughters and mothers was not significantly correlated with natal dispersal distance. Our results reveal cultural differences between the sexes, suggesting a relationship between culture and sex-biased dispersal.

Dataset Information

Parity is associated with cognitive function and brain age in both females and males.

Publications

Parity is associated with cognitive function and brain age in both females and males.

Similar Datasets

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