Brain Health and Cognitive Abilities: Unraveling the Stunting Connection

• Children with stunted growth may experience reduced cognitive abilities due to differences in brain function as early as six months of age, according to a study from the University of Nottingham and the University of East Anglia.
• The research emphasizes the importance of addressing working memory and distractibility in early infancy to potentially mitigate cognitive disadvantages later in life.

Children who are too short for their age can suffer reduced cognitive ability arising from differences in brain function as early as six months of age, according to new research.

Researchers from the University of Nottingham were part of a team led by the University of East Anglia who compared the ‘visual working memory’ – the memory capacity that holds visual cues for processing – in children who had stunted growth with those having typical growth.

Published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, the study found that the visual working memory of infants with poor physical growth was disrupted, making them more easily distracted and setting the stage for poorer cognitive ability one year later.

Stunted growth had previously been linked with poor cognitive outcomes later in life, but this is the first time that this association has been found in infancy. It is also the first time stunted growth has been linked to functional differences in how the brain works in early development.

The team of researchers studied more than 200 children in the first ever brain imaging study of its kind.

Professor John Spencer from the UEA’s School of Psychology led the project, he said: “We expected that poor growth might impact cognition in early development, but it was striking to see this at the level of brain function,” said 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 distractable.”

This distractability 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.

Dr Sobana Wijeakumar, Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology

The brain activity and cognitive abilities of the infants were assessed at six to nine months, and cognitive ability was followed up one year later. The results showed that infants with so-called ‘stunted growth’, often caused by poor nutrition or ill-health, had significantly poorer cognitive abilities at both stages than their typically-developing counterparts.

Interestingly, the children who bucked the trend and did well in their second year of cognitive testing despite having restricted growth were those whose visual memory had been unexpectedly strong at the six to nine months stage.

The discovery suggests that efforts to improve working memory and tackle distractibility in children during their crucial early months may reduce or prevent cognitive disadvantages later in life. This research also highlights 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; Community Empowerment Lab; Durham University; University of Iowa; Rhode Island Hospital; Brown University; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

‘Stunting in infancy is associated with atypical activation of working memory and attention networks’ is published by Nature Human Behaviour.

This publication is based on research funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Further funding came from the US National Institutes of Health and the Leverhulme Trust.

Source: University of Nottingham