Parenthood is often blamed for causing wrinkles and gray hairs—and some research suggests it actually might. But a new study offers parents better news on the aging front: Raising children could help keep your brain in better shape.

The research, published in February in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that parents’ brains showed strengthened “functional connectivity” patterns in some regions instead of displaying the typical decrease seen with age. These networks strengthened with each child, and the effects appeared to be long-lasting. “Functional connectivity is a measure that helps us understand how the brain communicates with itself,” Edwina R. Orchard, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Child Study Center and co-author of the study, told Health. “These patterns change with the aging process, but in parenthood, we saw the opposite pattern, suggesting ‘younger’ patterns of brain function in parents with more children.”

The findings make sense, Michelle DiBlasi, DO, chief of Inpatient Psychiatry at Tufts Medical Center, told Health. “Parenthood is a really critical time for both men and women where their brains need to adapt and change in order to manage new responsibilities, new social interactions, and the overall challenges that come with parenthood,” she said.

Some previous research has suggested that parenthood might help protect human and animal brains from age-related changes. But overall, “very little” is known about the long-term neural effects of being a parent, according to the authors of the new study. To investigate further, researchers decided to examine the brains of parents and non-parents, paying particular attention to functional connectivity—or how regions communicate with each other.

They analyzed structural and resting state brain MRIs of more than 37,000 participants, the “largest population-based neuroimaging dataset to date.” Participants were included in the U.K. Biobank, a biomedical database of adults in the United Kingdom ages 40 to 69 years. The study included 19,964 females and 17,607 males, all of whom completed information about their age, sex, number of children, education, and socioeconomic deprivation.

After analysis, researchers found that some areas of parents’ brains showed patterns of connectivity that ran counter to those typically associated with aging. The higher the number of children parented, the stronger the connectivity. “The brains of parents had increased areas that are associated with social connectedness, empathy, and improved connection with the brain to movements in your body,” said DiBlasi, who was not involved in the study.

She explained that these areas are known indicators of good brain health that often deteriorate with age. “This is a sign that parenthood could possibly prevent brain decline,” DiBlasi said. The study’s findings were consistent in females and males, suggesting the neuroprotective effects of parenting could be due to more than pregnancy. “What is really reassuring is that these brain changes continued to last over time,” DiBlasi added.