1Pregnancy and childbirth involve maternal brain adaptations that promote attachment to and protection 2 of the newborn. Using brain imaging and machine learning, we provide evidence for a positive relation-3 ship between number of childbirths and a 'younger-looking' brain in 12,021 women, which could not be 4 explained by common genetic variation. The findings demonstrate that parity can be linked to brain 5 health later in life. 6 Page 2 of 23Population-based neuroimaging reveals traces of childbirth in the maternal brain -de Lange et. al., 2019 During pregnancy and postpartum, fundamental biological processes are instigated to support maternal 7 adaptation and ensure protection of the offspring [1]. In rodents, brain adaptations across pregnancy 8 and postpartum include altered neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus [2], and changes in volume, dendritic 9 morphology, and cell proliferation in the hippocampus [1,3]. In humans, reduction in total brain vol-10 ume has been observed during pregnancy, with reversion occurring within six months of parturition [4]. 11Regional changes in brain structure are evident during the postpartum period, with effects depending 12 on region and time since delivery [5][6][7][8]. While some maternal brain changes revert postpartum, others 13 extend well beyond this phase [1,[7][8][9] and may influence the course of neurobiological aging later in 14 life. Some regional grey matter changes have been found to endure for at least 2 years post-pregnancy 15 in humans [1], and aged parous rats have increased hippocampal long-term potentiation and show fewer 16 signs of brain aging [1,10]. In addition to the direct and indirect bodily and environmental adaptations 17 in response to pregnancy and child-rearing, such long-lasting effects on brain health in humans could 18 also reflect genetic pleiotropy, as reproductive behaviors are complex, heritable traits with a polygenic 19 architecture that partly overlaps with a range of other traits that influence brain-health trajectories [11]. 20Based on the evidence of long-lasting effects of parity on the maternal brain, we investigated struc-21 tural brain characteristics in 12,021 women from the UK Biobank, hypothesizing that women who had 22 given (live) birth (n = 9568) would show less evidence of brain aging compared to their nulliparous peers 23 (n = 2453). We used machine learning and brain age prediction to test I) if a classifier could identify 24 women as parous or nulliparous based on morphometric brain characteristics, and II) whether brain age 25 gap (estimated brain age − chronological age) differed between parous and nulliparous women. Mean 26 age (± SD) was 54.72 (7.29) years for the full sample; 55.23 (7.22) years for parous and 52.79 (7.23) 27 years for nulliparous women. To investigate the impact of number of childbirths, we tested for associa-28 tions between number of births and the probabilistic scores from the group classification and brain age 29 gap, respectively, in addition to comparing women who had given 1-2 births, 3-...

Neurocysticercosis (NCC) occurs following brain infection by larvae of the cestode Taenia solium. It is the leading cause of preventable epilepsy worldwide and therefore constitutes a critical health challenge with significant global relevance. Despite this, much is still unknown about many key pathogenic aspects of the disease, including how cerebral infection with T. solium results in the development of seizures. Over the past century, valuable mechanistic insights have been generated using both clinical studies and animal models. In this review, we critically assess model systems for investigating disease processes in NCC. We explore the respective strengths and weaknesses of each model and summarize how they have contributed to current knowledge of the disease. We call for the continued development of animal models of NCC, with a focus on novel strategies for understanding this debilitating but often neglected disorder.

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