The father’s early exposure to stress is transmitted to his child by accelerating the development of the baby’s white matter.
- Made up of “cables” connecting different parts of the brain, white matter tracts play a central role in brain function.
- It is these bundles that are impacted by the stress experienced by the father during childhood.
It’s not just the mother’s stress that is transmitted to the child. Recent research has revealed that the mother’s anxiety during pregnancy increases the stress levels of the baby. A new study suggests that the stress experienced by the father during his childhood is also transmitted to his child and leads to the development of white matter bundles in his brain. Conducted by Finnish researchers from the University of Turku and published on November 24 in the JAMA Network Openit raises the question of epigenetic inheritance.
The influence of the father on the child less studied than that of the mother
Several recent studies have shown that changes in gene function caused by the environment can be inherited from one generation to another through gametes. In particular, nutrition and stress have been shown to cause these types of changes. These modifications do not alter the nucleotide sequence of the DNA but rather the function of the genes by so-called epigenetic mechanisms. Recent discoveries on the role of epigenetics in the regulation of gene function have led to new considerations on the mechanisms of inheritance. These transmissions have generally been studied from mother to child but very little from father to child.
In this research, scientists have discovered that the development of the baby’s brain is influenced by the traumas experienced by the father during his childhood. To reach these conclusions, they observed 72 families and asked the fathers to complete a questionnaire called the “trauma and distress scale” which reveals the level of trauma in five areas: emotional neglect, emotional abuse, physical neglect, physical abuse. and sexual abuse. The babies, aged 2 to 5 weeks, then underwent an MRI before carrying out a fractional anisotropy of the white matter of the brain which allows a measurement of the density of the fibers.
Clarify the relationship
The results revealed that the father’s exposure to stress is linked to faster development of white matter tracts in the child’s brain. Made up of “cables” connecting different parts of the brain, the axons of neurons, these bundles play a central role in the functioning of the brain. This relationship between the father’s stress exposure and the development of the child’s white matter tracts remained after taking into account the stress experienced by the mother during childhood as well as other possible factors during pregnancy.
“To be able to determine if these types of connections are actually transmitted by epigenetic changes in sperm, we have started collecting sperm samples from fathers and we will study these epigenetic markers with a research group.”, concludes Professor Hasse Karlsson, Principal Investigator.
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