IQ Link to Baby's Weight Gain in First Month

IQ Link to Baby's Weight Gain in First Month

  10:00:00 AM    Science Lover

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New research from the University of Adelaide shows that weight gain and increased head size in the first month of a baby's life is linked to a higher IQ at early school age.

IQ Link to Baby's Weight Gain in First Month
(Credit: © JPC-PROD / Fotolia)

The study was led by University of Adelaide Public Health researchers, who analysed data from more than 13,800 children who were born full-term.

The results, published in the international journal Pediatrics, show that babies who put on 40% of their birthweight in the first four weeks had an IQ 1.5 points higher by the time they were six years of age, compared with babies who only put on 15% of their birthweight.

Those with the biggest growth in head circumference also had the highest IQs.

"Head circumference is an indicator of brain volume, so a greater increase in head circumference in a newborn baby suggests more rapid brain growth," says the lead author of the study, Dr Lisa Smithers from the University of Adelaide's School of Population Health.

"Overall, newborn children who grew faster in the first four weeks had higher IQ scores later in life," she says.

"Those children who gained the most weight scored especially high on verbal IQ at age 6. This may be because the neural structures for verbal IQ develop earlier in life, which means the rapid weight gain during that neonatal period could be having a direct cognitive benefit for the child."

Previous studies have shown the association between early postnatal diet and IQ, but this is the first study of its kind to focus on the IQ benefits of rapid weight gain in the first month of life for healthy newborn babies.

Dr Smithers says the study further highlights the need for successful feeding of newborn babies.

"We know that many mothers have difficulty establishing breastfeeding in the first weeks of their baby's life," Dr Smithers says.

"The findings of our study suggest that if infants are having feeding problems, there needs to be early intervention in the management of that feeding."
 
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Biomarker for Autism Discovered

Biomarker for Autism Discovered

  8:42:00 PM    Science Lover

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Siblings of people with autism show a similar pattern of brain activity to that seen in people with autism when looking at emotional facial expressions. Researchers at the University of Cambridge identified the reduced activity in a part of the brain associated with empathy and argue it may be a 'biomarker' for a familial risk of autism.

Researchers have identified the reduced activity in a 
part of the brain associated with empathy and argue 
it may be a 'biomarker' for a familial risk of autism. 
(Credit: Michael Spencer)

Dr Michael Spencer, who led the study from the University's Autism Research Centre, said: "The findings provide a springboard to investigate what specific genes are associated with this biomarker. The brain's response to facial emotion could be a fundamental building block in causing autism and its associated difficulties."

The Medical Research Council funded study is published on the 12th of July, in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

Previous research has found that people with autism often struggle to read people's emotions and that their brains process emotional facial expressions differently to people without autism. However, this is the first time scientists have found siblings of individuals with autism have a similar reduction in brain activity when viewing others' emotions.

In one of the largest functional MRI (fMRI) studies of autism ever conducted, the researchers studied 40 families who had both a teenager with autism and a sibling without autism. Additionally, they recruited 40 teenagers with no family history of autism. The 120 participants were given fMRI scans while viewing a series of photographs of faces which were either neutral or expressing an emotion such as happiness. By comparing the brain's activity when viewing a happy verses a neutral face, the scientists were able to observe the areas within the brain that respond to this emotion.



Despite the fact that the siblings of those with autism did not have a diagnosis of autism or Asperger syndrome, they had decreased activity in various areas of the brain (including those associated with empathy, understanding others' emotions and processing information from faces) compared to those with no family history of autism. The scans of those with autism revealed that the same areas of the brain as their siblings were also underactive, but to a greater degree. (These brain regions included the temporal poles, the superior temporal sulcus, the superior frontal gyrus, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the fusiform face area.)

Because the siblings without autism and the controls differed only in terms of the siblings having a family history of autism, the brain activity differences can be attributed to the same genes that give the sibling their genetic risk for autism.

Explaining why only one of the siblings might develop autism when both have the same biomarker, Dr Spencer said: "It is likely that in the sibling who develops autism additional as yet unknown steps -- such as further genetic, brain structure or function differences -- take place to cause autism."

It is known that in a family where one child already has autism, the chances of a subsequent child developing autism are at least 20 times higher than in the general population. The reason for the enhanced risk, and the reason why two siblings can be so differently affected, are key unresolved questions in the field of autism research, and Dr Spencer's group's findings begin to shed light on these fundamental questions.

Professor Chris Kennard, chairman of the Medical Research Council funding board for the research, said: "This is the first time that a brain response to different human facial emotions has been shown to have similarities in people with autism and their unaffected brothers and sisters. Innovative research like this improves our fundamental understanding of how autism is passed through generations affecting some and not others. This is an important contribution to the Medical Research Council's strategy to use sophisticated techniques to uncover underpinning brain processes, to understand predispositions for disease, and to target treatments to the subtypes of complex disorders such as autism."

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Brain Co-Opts the Body to Promote Moral Behavior, Study Finds

Brain Co-Opts the Body to Promote Moral Behavior, Study Finds

  8:19:00 PM    Science Lover

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The human brain may simulate physical sensations to prompt introspection, capitalizing on moments of high emotion to promote moral behavior, according to a USC researcher.

Girl being reflective. Researchers found that individuals who were told stories designed to evoke compassion and admiration for virtue sometimes reported that they felt a physical sensation in response. (Credit: © Paul Hill / Fotolia)

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and the USC Rossier School of Education found that individuals who were told stories designed to evoke compassion and admiration for virtue sometimes reported that they felt a physical sensation in response. These psycho-physical "pangs" of emotion are very real -- they're detectable with brain scans -- and may be evidence that pro-social behavior is part of human survival.

Immordino-Yang's hypothesis, borne out thus far by her research, is that the feeling or emotional reactions in the body may sometimes prompt introspection, and can ultimately promote moral choices and motivation to help or emulate others.

"These emotions are foundational for morality and social learning. They have the power to change the course of your very life," Immordino-Yang said.

Her article appears in the July issue of Emotion Review.

In one instance cited in the article, a participant responded to a story of a little boy's selflessness toward his mother by reporting that he felt like there was a "balloon or something under my sternum, inflating and moving up and out." While pondering this physical sensation, the participant paused for a moment and considered his own relationship with his parents. Ultimately, he voiced a promise to express more gratitude toward them.



Researchers noted similar reactions to varying degrees in the test's other participants. Immordino-Yang's team has performed about 50 of these qualitative analyses in Beijing and at USC. The researchers provide the emotional story, then record the participant's reaction, and also use brain scans to record the physiological response.

"It's a systematic but naturalistic way to induce these emotions." Immordino-Yang said. After being told an emotional true story during a private, taped interview, the participant is simply asked to describe how he or she feels.

Immordino-Yang said she isn't surprised at the findings, though she is excited by them.

"We are an intensely social species," she said. "Our very biology is a social one. For centuries poets have described so-called gut feelings during social emotions. Now we are uncovering the biological evidence."

Future analysis of the data her team has gathered will focus on discovering to what degree culture and individual styles and experiences influence these reactions, as well as how they develop in children and how they can be promoted by education.

This research was supported by the Brain and Creativity Institute, the USC Provost's grant for Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Rossier School of Education.

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Human Brain Can 'See' Shapes With Sound : See No Shape, Touch No Shape, Hear a Shape? New Way of 'Seeing' the World

Human Brain Can 'See' Shapes With Sound : See No Shape, Touch No Shape, Hear a Shape? New Way of 'Seeing' the World

  9:08:00 PM    Science Lover

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Scientists at The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital -- The Neuro, McGill University have discovered that our brains have the ability to determine the shape of an object simply by processing specially-coded sounds, without any visual or tactile input. Not only does this new research tell us about the plasticity of the brain and how it perceives the world around us, it also provides important new possibilities for aiding those who are blind or with impaired vision.

New research shows that the human brain is able to 
determine the shape of an object simply by processing 
specially-coded sounds, without any visual or tactile input. 
(Credit: iStockphoto/Sergey Chushkin)

Shape is an inherent property of objects existing in both vision and touch but not sound. Researchers at The Neuro posed the question 'can shape be represented by sound artificially?' "The fact that a property of sound such as frequency can be used to convey shape information suggests that as long as the spatial relation is coded in a systematic way, shape can be preserved and made accessible -- even if the medium via which space is coded is not spatial in its physical nature," says Jung-Kyong Kim, PhD student in Dr. Robert Zatorre's lab at The Neuro and lead investigator in the study.

In other words, similar to our ocean-dwelling dolphin cousins who use echolocation to explore their surroundings, our brains can be trained to recognize shapes represented by sound and the hope is that those with impaired vision could be trained to use this as a tool. In the study, blindfolded sighted participants were trained to recognize tactile spatial information using sounds mapped from abstract shapes. Following training, the individuals were able to match auditory input to tactually discerned shapes and showed generalization to new auditory-tactile or sound-touch pairings.

"We live in a world where we perceive objects using information available from multiple sensory inputs," says Dr. Zatorre, neuroscientist at The Neuro and co-director of the International Laboratory for Brain Music and Sound Research. "On one hand, this organization leads to unique sense-specific percepts, such as colour in vision or pitch in hearing. On the other hand our perceptual system can integrate information present across different senses and generate a unified representation of an object. We can perceive a multisensory object as a single entity because we can detect equivalent attributes or patterns across different senses." Neuroimaging studies have identified brain areas that integrate information coming from different senses -- combining input from across the senses to create a complete and comprehensive picture.

The results from The Neuro study strengthen the hypothesis that our perception of a coherent object or event ultimately occurs at an abstract level beyond the sensory input modes in which it is presented. This research provides important new insight into how our brains process the world as well as new possibilities for those with impaired senses.

The study was published in the journal Experimental Brain Research. The research was supported by grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Editor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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Why Does a Human Baby Need a Full Year Before Starting to Walk?

Why Does a Human Baby Need a Full Year Before Starting to Walk?

  1:09:00 AM    Science Lover

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Why does a human baby need a full year before it can start walking, while a newborn foal gets up on its legs almost directly after birth? Scientist have assumed that human motor development is unique because our brain is unusually complex and because it is particularly challenging to walk on two legs. But now a research group at Lund University in Sweden has shown that human babies in fact start walking at the same stage in brain development as most other walking mammals, from small rodents to elephants.

Why does a human baby need a full year before it can start walking, while a newborn foal gets up on its legs almost directly after birth? (Credit: iStockphoto/Beth Jeppson)

The findings are published in the journal PNAS.

The Lund group consists of neurophysiologists Martin Garwicz and Maria Christensson and developmental psychologist Elia Psouni. Contrary to convention, they used conception and not birth as the starting point of motor development in their comparison between different mammals. This revealed astonishing similarities among species that diverged in evolution as much as 100 million years ago. -- Humans certainly have more brain cells and bigger brains than most other terrestrial mammalian species, but with respect to walking, brain development appears to be similar for us and other mammals. Our study demonstrates that the difference is quantitative, not qualitative, says Martin Garwicz.

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