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.

以前关于均等与长期认知变化之间关联的研究主要集中于女性，并且显示出相互矛盾的结果。我们通过分析从英国生物库收集的303,196个受试者的数据来调查这种关联。我们发现，无论是雌性还是雄性，都有后代都可以缩短响应时间，减少视觉记忆任务中的错误。与没有孩子的孩子相比，有两个或三个孩子的对象的差异最大，对男人的影响更大。我们进一步分析了平价与相对大脑年龄（n = 13,584）之间的关联，这是一种基于大脑图像的生物标记，表明相对于同龄人，大脑的结构看起来有多老。我们发现无论男女，与没有后代的人相比，有两个或三个后代的受试者的大脑年龄显着降低，从而证实了我们的认知功能结果。我们的研究结果表明，伴随着后代的生活方式因素，而不是仅由女性经历的妊娠物理过程，有助于这些关联，并强调了研究此类因素的重要性，尤其是在性别方面。