A new field of developmental neuroscience changes our understanding of the early years of human life

Biological Embedding of Early Social Adversity: From Fruit Flies to Kindergartners, a special volume published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1, 2, 3) and authored largely by researchers of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), sets out an emerging new field of the developmental science of childhood adversity.

The implications of the research are far reaching, from new approaches to learning and language acquisition, to new considerations for the health effects of social environments affecting large populations, and policies for early childhood care and education.

"CIFAR’s multidisciplinary and international program in early childhood development is transforming our understanding of how early life experiences affect the development of the brain and in so doing set a lifelong trajectory," says Dr. Alan Bernstein, CIFAR President & CEO. "This research is providing the scientific basis for public policy concerning the critical window to provide the optimal conditions that will enable our children to grow up to be well-adjusted, well-educated and productive individuals."

Moms’ depression affects babies’ language development – but so does anti-depressant drug – research shows

Janet Werker and her colleagues played recordings to babies when they were still in the womb.

Then the University of British Columbia psychologist and her team tested babies’ ability to discriminate between English and French when the infants were just six and 10 months old.

The findings, published Monday, are striking.

Both maternal depression, which affects up to 20 per cent of pregnant women, and treating mothers with a common anti-depressant drug threw off infants’ language development, Werker and her colleagues at the University of British Columbia and Harvard University report in the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Babies of depressed mothers were slow to reach language development “milestones,” they report. And babies of mothers taking antidepressants known as serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) reached milestones months early, they report.

Kangaroo Mother Care - a technique in which a breastfed premature infant remains in skin-to-skin contact with the parent’s chest rather than being placed in an incubator - has lasting positive impact on brain development, revealed Universite Laval researchers in the October issue of Acta Paediatrica. Very premature infants who benefited from this technique had better brain functioning in adolescence - comparable to that of adolescents born at term - than did premature infants placed in incubators.

Vitamin D deficiency during pregnancy could hinder babies’ brain development, impeding their mental and motor skills, a new study suggests.

Researchers in Spain measured the level of vitamin D in the blood of almost 2,000 women in their first or second trimester of pregnancy and evaluated the mental and motor abilities of their babies at about 14 months of age. The investigators found that children of vitamin D-deficient mothers scored lower than those whose mothers had adequate levels of the sunshine vitamin.

"These differences in the mental and psychomotor development scores do not likely make any difference at the individual level, but might have an important impact at the population level," said study lead author Dr. Eva Morales, a medical epidemiologist in the Center for Research in Environmental Epidemiology in Barcelona.

Overall, lower scores in these tests could lead to lower IQs among children, Morales added. The study was published online Sept. 17 and in the October print issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Pretend play can be fun for preschool children, but a new University of Virginia study, published in the current online edition of the journal Psychological Bulletin, finds that it is not as crucial to a child’s development as currently believed. Pretend play is any play a child engages in, alone, with playmates, or with adults, that involves uses of the imagination to create a fantasy world or situation, such as making toy cars go “vrrooooom” or making dolls talk.

Much of the previously presented “evidence” for the vitality of pretend play to development is derived from flawed methodology, according to Angeline Lillard, the new study’s lead author and a U.Va. professor of psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences. She said testers might have been biased by knowledge that they were testing children who had engaged in adult-directed pretend play prior to testing.

"We found no good evidence that pretend play contributes to creativity, intelligence or problem-solving," Lillard said. "However, we did find evidence that it just might be a factor contributing to language, storytelling, social development and self-regulation."

A typical five-month-old infant has hardly figured out how to sit up yet — even crawling may be months away — but there are a few babies who already know how to drive. They’re steering their very own mobile robots. 

The robots are designed to allow babies with disabilities to move around independently, at the same age their peers might learn to crawl.  Whether they use robots or their own limbs, starting to move may be an important part of baby brain development, some childhood specialists think. Researchers don’t want kids with cerebral palsy or other movement disorders to miss out. 

"We think that babies with disabilities are missing an opportunity for learning that typically developing babies have," said Carole Dennis, a professor occupational therapy at Ithaca College in New York.

The 2007 study by Yale University researchers provided the first evidence that 6- and 10-month-old infants could assess individuals based on their behaviour towards others, showing a preference for those who helped rather than hindered another individual.

Based on a series of experiments, researchers in the Department of Psychology at Otago have shown that the earlier findings may simply be the result of infants’ preferences for interesting and attention grabbing events, rather than an ability to evaluate individuals based on their social interactions with others.

"The paper received a lot of attention when it was first published, including coverage in the New York Times. It has received well over 100 citations since 2007, a phenomenal number over such a short period. The paper was initially brought to our attention by one of the PhD students in our lab. The head of the lab, Professor Harlene Hayne, suggested that a group of us read the paper together and then meet to discuss it. Our original motivation for reading the paper was merely interest. Obviously, the idea that morality is innate is extremely interesting and, if true, would raise questions about which components of our moral system are innate and also have implications for the wider issue of the roles that nature and nurture play in development," says Dr Scarf.

The Otago study was recently published in PLoS One

Natural birth — but not C-section — triggers brain boosting proteins

Vaginal birth triggers the expression of a protein in the brains of newborns that improves brain development and function in adulthood, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers, who also found that this protein expression is impaired in the brains of offspring delivered by caesarean section (C-sections).

These findings are published in the August issue of PLoS ONE by a team of researchers led by Tamas Horvath, the Jean and David W. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Research and chair of the Department of Comparative Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

The team studied the effect of natural and surgical deliveries on mitochondrial uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2) in mice. UCP2 is important for the proper development of hippocampal neurons and circuits. This area of the brain is responsible for short- and long-term memory. UCP2 is involved in cellular metabolism of fat, which is a key component of breast milk, suggesting that induction of UCP2 by natural birth may aid the transition to breast feeding.

The researchers found that natural birth triggered UCP2 expression in the neurons located in the hippocampal region of the brain. This was diminished in the brains of mice born via C-section. Knocking out the UCP2 gene or chemically inhibiting UCP2 function interfered with the differentiation of hippocampal neurons and circuits, and impaired adult behaviors related to hippocampal functions.

“These results reveal a potentially critical role of UCP2 in the proper development of brain circuits and related behaviors,” said Horvath. “The increasing prevalence of C-sections driven by convenience rather than medical necessity may have a previously unsuspected lasting effect on brain development and function in humans as well.”