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One under-spoken gem of neurological research? Fathers experience a rush of new brain cell growth when they take care of their newborns. Not only is there a heavy re-wiring of existing neurons, there is also a sudden sprouting of new ones, particularly those concentrated in the olfactory bulb (processing smell) and the hippocampus (consolidating memories). Research with mice shows that a father recognizes his pups based on their smell because when they were born his brain sprouted bunches of neurons to specifically encode their smells like names. The memories seem to be stronger because new neurons are sprouted for them instead of re-wiring old ones.
It only works if daddy mice take care of their babies, though. When a mesh screen was placed between fathers and pups so fathers could only smell them, no new neurons grew, and fathers didn't recognize pups as adults. The hormone prolactin (best known for signaling the release of milk in breastfeeding mothers) is elevated when fathers care for offspring, and the elevated prolactin stimulates brain growth.
In mice. Unfortunately far less research has been done on human fathers, and none (according to Google Scholar) regarding adoptive parents. The research cited here is from Paternal recognition of adult offspring mediated by newly generated CNS neurons (Mak & Weiss, 2010). But the mouse brain is a good enough model of the human brain to justify hundreds of thousands of rodent experiments, so very likely the moral holds: so long as fathers take care of their babies, those infants inspire and sculpt a little more Daddy brain -- and taking a good sniff of that sweet infant smell (being careful which end you choose) may just be what it's all about.
