Understanding the Role of Nutrition in the Brain & Behavioral Development of Toddlers and Preschool Children: Identifying and Overcoming Methodological Barriers

The pre-school years (i.e., 1–5 years of age) is a time of rapid and dramatic postnatal brain development, i.e., neural plasticity, and of fundamental acquisition of cognitive development i.e., working memory, attention and inhibitory control. Also, it is a time of transition from a direct maternal mediation/selection of diet-based nutrition to food selection that is more based on self-selection and self-gratification. However, there have been fewer published studies in pre-school children than in infants or school-aged children that examined the role of nutrition in brain/mental development (i.e., 125 studies vs. 232 and 303 studies, respectively during the last 28 years, Figure 1). This may arise because of age-related variability, in terms of individual differences in temperament, linguistic ability, and patterns of neural activity that may affect assessment of neural and cognitive development in pre-school children. In this review, we suggest several approaches for assessing brain function in children that can be refined. It would be desirable if the discipline developed some common elements to be included in future studies of diet and brain function, with the idea that they would complement more targeted measures based on time of exposure and understanding of data from animal models. Underlining this approach is the concepts of “window of sensitivity” during which nutrients may affect postnatal neural development: investigators and expert panels need to specifically look for region-specific changes and do so with understanding of the likely time window during which the nutrient was, or was not available. (244 words

Understanding the role of nutrition in the brain and behavioral development of toddlers and preschool children: Identifying and addressing methodological barriers

The preschool years (i.e. 1-5 years of age) is a time of rapid and dramatic postnatal brain development (i.e. neural plasticity), and of fundamental acquisition of cognitive development (i.e. working memory, attention and inhibitory control). Also, it is a time of transition from a direct maternal mediation/selection of diet-based nutrition to food selection that is more based on selfselection and self-gratification. However, there have been fewer published studies in preschool children than in infants or school-aged children that examined the role of nutrition in brain/mental development (125 studies versus 232 and 303 studies, respectively during the last 28 years). This may arise because of age-related variability, in terms of individual differences in temperament, linguistic ability, and patterns of neural activity that may affect assessment of neural and cognitive development in pre-school children. In this review, we suggest several approaches for assessing brain function in children that can be refined. It would be desirable if the discipline developed some common elements to be included in future studies of diet and brain function, with the idea that they would complement more targeted measures based on time of exposure and understanding of data from animal models. Underlining this approach is the concept of 'window of sensitivity' during which nutrients may affect postnatal neural development: investigators and expert panels need to look specifically for region-specific changes and do so with understanding of the likely time window during which the nutrient was, or was not available

Infant word segmentation and childhood vocabulary development: a longitudinal analysis: Infant word segmentation and vocabulary outcomes

Infants begin to segment novel words from speech by 7.5 months, demonstrating an ability to track, encode and retrieve words in the context of larger units. Although it is presumed that word recognition at this stage is a prerequisite to constructing a vocabulary, the continuity between these stages of development has not yet been empirically demonstrated. The goal of the present study is to investigate whether infant word segmentation skills are indeed related to later lexical development. Two word segmentation tasks, varying in complexity, were administered in infancy and related to childhood outcome measures. Outcome measures consisted of age-normed productive vocabulary percentiles and a measure of cognitive development. Results demonstrated a strong degree of association between infant word segmentation abilities at 7 months and productive vocabulary size at 24 months. In addition, outcome groups, as defined by median vocabulary size and growth trajectories at 24 months, showed distinct word segmentation abilities as infants. These findings provide the first prospective evidence supporting the predictive validity of infant word segmentation tasks and suggest that they are indeed associated with mature word knowledge

Examining Pregnant Women's Hostile Attributions About Infants as a Predictor of Offspring Maltreatment

Child maltreatment is a serious public health problem that disproportionately affects infants and toddlers. In the interest of informing prevention and intervention efforts, this study examined pregnant women’s attributions about infants as a risk factor for child maltreatment and harsh parenting during their children’s first and second years. We also provide specific methods for practitioners to assess hostile attributions

The Social Orienting Continuum and Response Scale (SOC-RS): A Dimensional Measure for Preschool-aged Children

Children with autism show deficits in social orienting, joint attention, orienting to their names, and social smiling as early as the first year of life. The present study describes the development of the Social Orienting Continuum and Response Scale (SOC-RS), a quantitative scale that is designed to be used in the context of video-recorded Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) sessions. The SOC-RS was shown to be reliable and valid, and when applied to a longitudinal sample of children with autism studied at 2 and 4 years of age, was shown to be sensitive to decreased levels of social referencing, joint attention, orientating to name, and social smiling in autism. The implications of these findings and potential applications of the SOC-RS are discussed

Better working memory for non-social targets in infant siblings of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

We compared working memory (WM) for location of social vs. non-social targets in infant siblings of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (sibs-ASD, n=25) and typically developing children (sibs-TD, n=30) at 6.5 and 9 months of age. There was a significant interaction of risk group and target-type on WM, in which the sibs-ASD had better WM for non-social targets as compared to controls. There was no group by stimulus interaction on two non-memory measures. The results suggest that the increased competency of sibs-ASD in WM (creating, updating, and using transient representations) for non-social stimuli distinguishes them from sibs-TD by 9 months of age. This early emerging strength is discussed as a developmental pathway that may have implications for social attention and learning in children at risk for ASD

Phosphatidylcholine supplementation in pregnant women consuming moderate-choline diets does not enhance infant cognitive function: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Background: Choline is essential for fetal brain development, and it is not known whether a typical American diet contains enough choline to ensure optimal brain development

Frequency of spontaneous BOLD signal shifts during infancy and correlates with cognitive performance

Numerous studies have been conducted to delineate the early development of different functional networks, based on measuring the temporal synchronization of spontaneous blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals acquired using resting state functional MRI (rsfMRI). However, little attention has been paid to the change of the frequency properties of these signals during early brain development. Such frequency properties may reflect important physiological changes and potentially have significant cognitive consequences. In this study, leveraging a large (N=86 subjects), longitudinal sample of human infants scanned during the first two years of life, we aimed to specifically delineate the developmental changes of the frequency characteristics of spontaneous BOLD signals. Both whole-brain and network-level examinations were carried out and the frequency-behavior relationship was explored. Our results revealed a clear right-ward shift of BOLD signal frequency during the first year of life. Moreover, the power at the peak-frequency for sensorimotor and lateral visual networks correlates with domain-specific Mullen Scales in 1-year-olds, suggesting the behavioral significance of the BOLD signal frequency during infancy. Findings from this study shed light into early functional brain development and provide a new perspective for future searches for functional developmental abnormalities

The First Year Inventory: A longitudinal follow-up of 12-month-olds to 3 years of age

The First Year Inventory (FYI) is a parent-report measure designed to identify 12-month old infants at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The FYI taps behaviors that indicate risk in the developmental domains of sensory-regulatory and social-communication functioning. This longitudinal study is a follow-up of 699 children at 3 years of age from a community sample whose parents completed the FYI when their children were 12 months old. Parents of all 699 children completed the Social Responsiveness Scale – Preschool version (SRS-P) and the Developmental Concerns Questionnaire (DCQ) to determine age 3 developmental outcomes. In addition, children deemed at-risk for ASD based on liberal cut points on the FYI, SRS-P, and/or DCQ were invited for in-person diagnostic evaluations. We found 9 children who had a confirmed diagnosis of ASD from the sample of 699. ROC analyses determined that a two-domain cutoff score yielded optimal classification of children: 31% of those meeting algorithm cut-offs had ASD and 85% had a developmental disability or concern by age three. These results suggest that the FYI is a promising tool for identifying 12-month old infants who are at risk for an eventual diagnosis of ASD