Summary: Research shows that infants with stunted growth display cognitive disruptions as early as six months. The study reveals that these infants have compromised visual working memory, leading to higher distractibility and poor cognitive outcomes by age one. This is the first time stunted growth has been connected to functional brain differences in infancy. Early intervention is crucial to counter cognitive disadvantages in the future.
Key Facts:
- Stunted growth in infants can impact cognitive abilities as early as six months.
- This study demonstrates a link between stunted growth and functional brain differences in early development.
- Infants with strong visual memory at six to nine months, despite stunted growth, perform better in cognitive testing in their second year.
Source: University of East Anglia
Children who are too short for their age can experience reduced cognitive ability due to differences in brain function as early as six months, according to new research from the University of East Anglia.
Researchers compared the visual working memory, which holds visual cues for processing, in children with stunted growth and those with typical growth.
Published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, the study finds that infants with poor physical growth have disrupted visual working memory, making them more easily distracted and leading to poorer cognitive ability one year later.
While stunted growth has been linked to poor cognitive outcomes in later life, this is the first time it has been associated with functional brain differences in early development.
Conducted by Prof John Spencer at UEA’s School of Psychology, the research team studied over 200 children in the first-ever brain imaging study of its kind.
“We expected that poor growth might impact cognition in early development, but it was striking to see this at the level of brain function,” says Prof Spencer.
“Typically-developing infants in our study showed engagement of a working memory brain network – and this brain activity predicted cognitive outcomes one year later. But the stunted infants showed a very different pattern, suggesting that they were quite distractible.”
“This distractibility was associated with a brain network typically involved in the allocation of attention to objects or tasks, suppressing distraction, and maintaining items in working memory,” says Dr Sobana Wijeakumar, first author of the study. Dr. Wijeakumar is an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham.
The infants’ brain activity and cognitive abilities were assessed at six to nine months, with cognitive ability re-evaluated one year later. The results show that infants with stunted growth, often caused by poor nutrition or ill-health, had significantly poorer cognitive abilities at both stages compared to typically-developing infants.
Interestingly, the infants who performed well in their second year of cognitive testing despite restricted growth were those with unexpectedly strong visual memory between six to nine months.
This discovery suggests that improving working memory and reducing distractibility in infants during their crucial early months may mitigate or prevent cognitive disadvantages in later life. It also emphasizes the importance of studying brain function in early development.
The research was led by the University of East Anglia in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, the Community Empowerment Lab, Durham University, University of Iowa, Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“Stunting in infancy is associated with atypical activation of working memory and attention networks” is published in Nature Human Behaviour.
This research received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the US National Institutes of Health, and the Leverhulme Trust.
About this child development and cognition research:
Author: Lisa Horton
Source: University of East Anglia
Contact: Lisa Horton – University of East Anglia
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Closed access.
“Stunting in infancy is associated with atypical activation of working memory and attention networks” by John Spencer et al. Nature Human Behavior
Abstract:
Stunting in infancy is associated with atypical activation of working memory and attention networks.
Stunting is linked to poor long-term cognitive, academic, and economic outcomes, but the mechanisms by which it affects cognition in early development are still unknown.
In a pioneering neuroimaging study conducted on infants from rural India, we demonstrate that stunting affects a crucial cognitive system in early development – visual working memory. Stunted infants display poor visual working memory performance and are easily distractible.
Poor performance is associated with reduced engagement of the left anterior intraparietal sulcus, a region involved in visual working memory maintenance, and increased suppression in the right temporoparietal junction, a region involved in attentional shifting.
When assessed one year later, stunted infants have lower problem-solving scores, while infants of normal height with greater left anterior intraparietal sulcus activation show higher problem-solving scores.
Finally, short-for-age infants with poor physical growth indices but good visual working memory performance show more positive outcomes, suggesting that intervention efforts should focus on improving working memory and reducing distractibility in infancy.
