The Neurobiology Of Fatherhood
Neuroscience has identified two areas of the brain associated with caregiving and both can be activated in fathers like mothers, the more so the father cares for his baby.
- The emotional empathy brain network. This network enables an automatic understanding of the babys mental state, allowing the parent to feel and experience in herself/himself the physical pain or emotional distress of the baby.
- The socio-cognitive brain network. This is a later developing circuit, including cortical and frontal brain areas. It is associated with mentalizing, cognitive empathy, and social understanding. In relation to caring for an infant, it enables a parent to infer infants mental state from behaviour, to predict infant needs and plan future caregiving activities.
Actively caring fathers show greater activation in the emotional empathy brain network. When fathers engage in regular active day-to-day care of children particularly in the extreme case when fathers raise their babies with no maternal involvement they become as attuned and as sensitive to the babys cues as mothers do.
Longitudinal research has since found that emotional empathy brain activity in a father in year one is associated with better emotion regulation in the child four years later. Similarly, higher activity in the socio-cognitive brain network is associated with a childs higher social skills four years later.
Health And Safety Issues
A maternal death is defined by WHO as “the death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes”.
About 56% of maternal deaths occur in Sub-Saharan Africa and another 29% in South Asia.
In 2006, the organization Save the Children has ranked the countries of the world, and found that Scandinavian countries are the safest places to give birth, whereas countries in sub-Saharan Africa are the least safe to give birth. This study argues a mother in the bottom ten ranked countries is over 750 times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth, compared to a mother in the top ten ranked countries, and a mother in the bottom ten ranked countries is 28 times more likely to see her child die before reaching their first birthday.
The most recent data suggests that Italy, Sweden and Luxembourg are the safest countries in terms of maternal death and Afghanistan, Central African Republic and Malawi are the most dangerous.
Genetics Of The Abo System
The ABO blood group system is controlled by a single gene on chromosome 9. There are three common alleles for the gene, often represented by the letters IA , IB , and i . With three alleles, there are six possible genotypes for the ABO blood group. However, alleles IA and IB are both dominant to allele i and codominant to each other. This results in just four possible phenotypes for the ABO system. These genotypes and phenotypes are shown in Table \.
Table \: ABO Blood Group System
Genotype | Phenotype |
---|---|
\ | |
\ | O |
The diagram in Figure \ shows an example of how ABO blood type is inherited. In this particular example, the father has blood type A and the mother has blood type B . This mating type can produce children with each of the four possible ABO phenotypes, although in any given family not all phenotypes may be present in the children.
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More Mothers Of Science
It’s May, and that means Mother’s Day is just around the corner. So it’s time, once again, to talk about the “mothers” of scientific fields. The “founding mother” or “founding father” of a field is generally considered to have made the first significant contributions to and/or delineation of that field.
In researching last year’s post about the mothers of science, I found that out of the dozens or hundreds of acclaimed “founding” scientists, only a handful were women. There are a number of reasons for this: women were historically discouraged from getting or not allowed to get an education , they were considered the “weaker-minded” sex, and science in particular was considered to be a man’s field. Nonetheless, the women included in this post are by no means the;only;women to make significant contributions to science.
The Mother Of Physical Cosmology
![Zahara Jolie](https://www.tutordale.com/wp-content/uploads/zahara-jolie-pitts-biological-mother-begs-to-speak-to-her.jpeg)
Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer who discovered the period-luminosity relationship of Cepheid stars, which allowed astronomers to measure the distance between the Earth and far-off galaxies. You’ve probably heard of Edwin Hubble, or Hubble’s Law, or at least the Hubble Telescope, right? Well, think of Hubble as the person clever enough to fit the key into the lock, and Leavitt herself as;the actual keythat’s how important her work was to astronomy as we know it today.
Leavitt began as a human “computer” in 1893 at the Harvard College Observatory, measuring and cataloging the brightness of Cepheid, or “variable,” stars, whose luminosity varies over time. Because she was a woman, Leavitt was not allowed to operate the telescope herself, but after analyzing nearly 2,000 photographic plates from the observatory’s collection, she noticed a pattern among the stars.
Role-model level: A+. Henrietta Swan Leavitt didn’t let the sexism of her day keep her from making important scientific discoveries, and we can all learn a thing or two from her about thriving even in difficult conditions.
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The Difference Between Biological Mother And Birth Mother
When used as nouns, biological mother means the woman from whom one inherits half of one’s dna and who is the source of one’s mitochondrial dna, whereas birth mother means the woman who gives birth to a child .
check bellow for the other definitions of Biological mother and Birth mother
Biological mother as a noun:
The woman from whom one inherits half of one’s DNA and who is the source of one’s mitochondrial DNA.
Birth mother as a noun:
The woman who gives birth to a child
Compare words:
What Were The Outcomes Of The Renaissance
The Renaissance led to significant results. It brought about a transition from the medieval to the modern age. This period witnessed the end of the old and reactionary medieval spirit, and the beginning of the new spirit of science, reason and experimentation. The hands of the monarchy were strengthened.
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The Mother Of Nuclear Science
You’ve probably heard of Marie Curie, arguably the most famous woman in the history of modern science. Marie Skodowska Curie was a Polish-French physicist and chemist whose research on radioactivity contributed to a fundamental shift in scientific understanding. She is the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win twice, and the only person of either gender to win twice in multiple sciences . She developed the theory of radioactivity, as well as techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and she discovered two elements, polonium and radium.
Curie and her scientist husband, Pierre Curie, published 32 scientific papers between the two of them in the span of just 4 years, including one that found that diseased, tumor-forming cells were destroyed faster than healthy cells when exposed to radium. This provided the basis for modern-day cancer radiation treatment, though it took another decadeand Curie’s discovery of a means of measuring radioactivitybefore she started research into the treatment of cancer at what is now known as the Institut Curie.
Role-model level: A+++++++. The amount of amazing discoveries Marie Curie made in her lifetime is just staggering.
The Neuroscience Of Fatherhood
The adult brain becomes more plastic after the birth of a baby, triggered by hormonal changes. This happens in both mothers and fathersand to a much greater extent than in other mammals. Because of this increased plasticity, humans have a much stronger capacity to change through the practice of direct care for the child. Interestingly, both biological and adoptive fathers who care for their infants have similar brain responses.
Abraham and Feldman identify three neural circuits relevant to motherhood and fatherhood:
Core limbic
The neural patterns observed in this ancient part of the brain during parenting are similar to those found in other mammals. This neural activity is related to vigilance for the childs safety and well-being.
Empathy sub-network
This helps parents to resonate with the experience of the infant in the moment.
Mentalising sub-network
This helps parents recognise the infants cues, make predictions and plan responses.
Using fMRI, Abraham and Feldman studied different fathers full-time working fathers, fathers who were coparenting 50/50 with mothers, and gay fathers parenting without women. Caring fatherhood was associated with more activation of the empathy network, to the point that, if fathers are caring for the child wholly by themselves , the patterns were similar to those observed in mothers brains.
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Henrietta Lacks: The Mother Of Modern Medicine
Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old mother of five, died of cervical cancer on 4 October 1951; and while her disease was a tragedy for her family, for the world of medical research and beyond that, every one of us on the planet it was something of a miracle.
Because, in the years since her death, Lacks’s cells taken from her tumour while she was undergoing surgery have been responsible for some of the most important medical advances of all time. The polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping and IVF: all these health milestones, and many more, owe everything to the life, and death, of a young mother.
Lacks’s cells known as HeLa, using the first two letters of each of her names became the first immortal human cell line in history. Scientists at the hospital where she died, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, had been working for years to try to start a continuously reproducing cell line but the cells always died. Lacks’s were the first that “took”, introducing a constantly reproducing line of cells that are literally, to give them their scientific definition, immortal. Quite why hers were the cells that survived and reproduced, when those of hundreds of other patients had died, is unclear but the best guess is that the reason was linked to the ferocity of her tumour, which seems to have been made more virulent by the fact that she also suffered from;syphilis.
The Mother Of Family And Consumer Science
Ellen Swallow Richards was an American industrial and environmental chemist who advocated for women’s education, pioneered the field of sanitary engineering, and founded the home economics movement. She was the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology;and later became the first woman teacher there as well. After receiving her advanced degree, she focused on sanitary chemistry, which involved testing the pollution levels of water, air, and food. Her work led to the first state water-quality standards in America as well as the first modern municipal sewage treatment plant.
Richards began the home economics movement with the intention of applying scientific knowledge to domestic work and thus;paving the way for women, who were responsible for the home and family nutrition, into higher education through an education in the sciences.;She brought the term “ecology”;to the English language, defining it as including both consumer nutrition and environmental education . Richards helped to form the American Home Economics Association, and she established the Journal of Home Economics .
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Rhesus Blood Group And Transfusions
After the ABO system, the Rhesus system is the second most important blood group system in blood transfusions. The D antigen is the one most likely to provoke an immune response in people who lack the antigen. People who have the D antigen can be safely transfused with either Rh+ or Rh- blood, whereas people who lack the D antigen can be safely transfused only with Rh- blood.
Unlike anti-A and anti-B antibodies to ABO antigens, anti-D antibodies for the Rhesus system are not usually produced by sensitization to environmental substances. However, people who lack the D antigen may produce anti-D antibodies if exposed to Rh+ blood. This may happen accidentally in a blood transfusion, although this is extremely unlikely today. It may also happen during pregnancy with an Rh+ fetus if some of the fetal blood cells pass into the motherâs blood circulation.
‘mom Genes’ Aims To Examine Biological Transformations Of Motherhood
![Kamala Harris Wrote About Mom Shyamala Gopalanâs Cancer ...](https://www.tutordale.com/wp-content/uploads/kamala-harris-wrote-about-mom-shyamala-gopalanatms-cancer.jpeg)
Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct, by Abigail Tucker Gallery Bookshide caption
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Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct, by Abigail Tucker
The theme of transformation is central to Abigail Tucker’s Mom Genes.
When women give birth and become mothers, writes Tucker, who is a science writer and mother of four, they “rebuilt from the ground up” as they undergo a “radical self-revision” that involves “a monomaniacal focus” on the baby.
Hormone and brain-based changes drive this transformation and “make a mother,” she writes. New moms derive intense pleasure from their infant, experience heightened sensitivity to cues and signals coming from the baby, and are overtaken with a need to help and protect the baby at all costs.
Tucker’s argument is not a subtle one: Full stop “babies occupy a special place in the hearts of all men and women, and in our neural circuitry as well.”
I wonder: Has Tucker met anyone whose heart just isn’t into babies? I have; they’re just as human as anyone else. And sometimes, sadly, real pathology occurs, as Tucker acknowledges by reporting that the most likely killer of a week-old American baby is that infant’s mother.
But Tucker’s descriptions of how radically women may change at the time of motherhood and, as an extention, how this might affect their ability to focus on other things gets pretty harrowing.
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List Of People Considered Father Or Mother Of A Scientific Field
The following is a list of people who are considered a “father” or “mother” of a scientific field. Such people are generally regarded to have made the first significant contributions to and/or delineation of that field; they may also be seen as “a” rather than “the” father or mother of the field. Debate over who merits the title can be perennial.
Rhesus Blood Group System
Another well-known blood group system is the Rhesus blood group system. The Rhesus system has dozens of different antigens but only five main antigens . The major Rhesus antigen is the D antigen. People with the D antigen are called Rh-positive , and people who lack the D antigen are called Rh-negative . Rhesus antigens are thought to play a role in transporting ions across cell membranes by acting as channel proteins.
The Rhesus blood group system is controlled by two linked genes on chromosome 1. One gene, called RHD, produces a single antigen, antigen D. The other gene, called RHCE, produces the other four relatively common Rhesus antigens , depending on which alleles for this gene are inherited.
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What Do You Do In Biology
The field of biology is the study of those living organisms, including things like their physical structure, physiological mechanisms, chemical and molecular interactions, and even how they came to exist in the first place and how theyve evolved over time. In terms of what biology is, thats the short answer.
Boy Or Girl It’s In The Father’s Genes
— A Newcastle University study involving thousands of families is helping prospective parents work out whether they are likely to have sons or daughters.
The work by Corry Gellatly, a research scientist at the university, has shown that men inherit a tendency to have more sons or more daughters from their parents. This means that a man with many brothers is more likely to have sons, while a man with many sisters is more likely to have daughters.
The research, published online today by the journal Evolutionary Biology, involved a study of 927 family trees containing information on 556,387 people from North America and Europe going back to 1600.
“The family tree study showed that whether you’re likely to have a boy or a girl is inherited. We now know that men are more likely to have sons if they have more brothers but are more likely to have daughters if they have more sisters. However, in women, you just can’t predict it,” Mr Gellatly explains.
Men determine the sex of a baby depending on whether their sperm is carrying an X or Y chromosome. An X chromosome combines with the mother’s X chromosome to make a baby girl and a Y chromosome will combine with the mother’s to make a boy .
Sons or daughters?
A gene consists of two parts, known as alleles, one inherited from each parent. In his paper, Mr Gellatly demonstrates that it is likely men carry two different types of allele, which results in three possible combinations in a gene that controls the ratio of X and Y sperm;
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Fatherhood Is Rooted In Biology Like Motherhood
Fundamental to the case that the father-child bond should be supported is the biology and neurobiology of fatherhood. We advocate that the father-child bond should be supported and that the role of the father is not just as a helper of the mother, nor just a social/moral; responsibility.
We have produced a very brief overview of the biology of fatherhood.
When fathers are more engaged in caring for their babies, they experience stronger hormonal and neurobiological changes; they typically express feelings of love and tenderness. These changes are, in turn, associated with short and longer-term benefits for the infant.