Tummy Time
My first short feature for Slate ran last week, covering the importance of tummy time for infants.
The Back To Sleep Campaign was instituted by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1992 to battle the number of infants dying each year from SIDS. And it was hugely successful, cutting SIDS cases in the US in half since it started.
My first short feature for Slate ran last week, covering the importance of tummy time for infants.
The Back To Sleep Campaign was instituted by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 1992 to battle the number of infants dying each year from SIDS. And it was hugely successful, cutting SIDS cases in the US in half since it started.
Infants are no longer spending time on their stomachs at night, and many are not getting enough belly playtime (called "tummy time") either. New research has correlated tummy time deficits to lags in pre-walking motor skill development, which in turn has been linked in large birth cohort studies to physical and cognitive ability later in life.
Four years after the Back to Sleep campaign launched, its inadvertent effects started trickling into the clinic. Most notably, some infants had disfiguring flat spots on the back soft crowns of their heads. It took a few years for researchers and doctors to realize that the change in sleeping position also affected prewalking motor skills (whether or not a baby had a misshaped head). Then in 2004, a research team led by Bradley Thach at the Washington University School of Medicine studied the difference in head movements between stomach and back sleepers. Thach showed that babies who spent nights on their bellies quickly developed the brain connections and muscle strength to turn their heads from side to side—one of the first motor-skill hurdles. Babies who consistently slept on their backs, on the other hand, were less likely to have sufficient head mobility at 3 to 5 months.
Whether we are talking about tummy time, breastfeeding, or watching Baby Einstein videos, it's important to understand that child development doesn't hinge on one thing. Rather, a multitude of genetic and environmental differences factor in to make us who we are. But I think it's important to get as much information to the public as possible about potential new links researchers uncover.
Photo via Flickr / samgranleese
My Scientific American Story on the Father-Child Bond
Sorry, but this post is nothing but shameless self-promotion! My first short feature article was published in Scientific American today, which discusses the neurobiology of the father-child bond. Give it a read!
Sorry, but this post is nothing but shameless self-promotion! My first short feature article was published in Scientific American today, which discusses the neurobiology of the father-child bond. Give it a read!
Last May, I took a trip to San Diego for my brother-in-law’s graduation from college, and to meet his 4-month old son, Landon, for the first time. Throughout the weekend, I couldn’t suppress my inner science nerd, and often found myself probing my nephew’s foot reflexes. Pressured from my wife’s disapproving looks and the blank stares I received from her family as I explained why his toes curled this way or that, I dropped the shop-talk in favor of baby-talk.
Click here to read the rest.
Sugar-coated Laziness
Check out this study. Researchers found that when "teenage" rats (30-45 days old) consumed massive amounts of sugar, they became extremely difficult to train as adults. For two weeks or so during adolescence, one group of rats had free access to a tasty 5% sucrose solution, while the control group only had water available. Similar to some American teenagers, the experimental group of rats consumed about 20% of their daily caloric intake as simple sugar.
Check out this study. Researchers found that when "teenage" rats (30-45 days old) consumed massive amounts of sugar, they became extremely difficult to train as adults. For two weeks or so during adolescence, one group of rats had free access to a tasty 5% sucrose solution, while the control group only had water available. Similar to some American teenagers, the experimental group of rats consumed about 20% of their daily caloric intake as simple sugar.
To give you some background, it's extremely easy to train adult rats to perform simple tasks, such as pulling levers or pressing buttons in return for a food reward. However, the researchers couldn't motivate the rats that had consumed large amounts of sugar as teenagers to learn the task. My first reaction while reading this paper was: "Big deal. That group of rats just had sugar overload. It no longer had any real value for them, so there was no incentive to learn the new task".
But here's where the story gets interesting: if you repeat the experiment, but replace the teenage rats with adult rats, you get strikingly different results. When adult rats have free access to a sugary drink for two weeks, they never lose motivation for the sweet reward, and easily learn the new lever-pull task later in life. So it's not that rats are simply sick of the sweet reward, but rather, it seems the sweet drink over-stimulated the reward pathway in the brain during adolescent development, leading to problems with motivation in adulthood.
Were the calories in the sugary drink or the sweet taste to blame for hyper-activating the reward circuits in the brain? To answer this, the authors took another group of teenage rats and gave them free access to a drink flavored with artificial sweetener, which has no calories. These rats were also unmotivated and rather difficult to train later in life, so the authors concluded that the sweet taste, but not the sugar itself, was hyper-activating the brain's reward circuits.
Besides, ahem, crazy neuroscientists writing for health blogs, who cares about lazy rats? Well, the authors argue that a sign of depression in rodents is lack of motivation to perform simple tasks. Given that incidence rates for depression and other psychological illness are increasing in today's society, it's interesting to see how seemingly benign events during adolescence -- a critical time in brain development -- affect the mental state of adult animals.
How "The Science of Success" Redefines Psychology
I just finished reading Dave Dobbs' new article in the the December issue of The Atlantic, "The Science of Success". Dobbs turns the classic question of Nature vs. Nurture, whether our genes or our environment are the deterministic drivers of our fate, on its head. Traditionally, those who support "nature" say that our genes are most influential in defining us. On the other hand, those that support the "nurture" side say that our environment plays a more important role. Based on new research, Dobbs introduces the idea of two types of people, "dandelions" and "orchids". Dandelions can thrive anywhere, despite their environment or upbringing. Orchids, however, are more temperamental, and require a stable environment to survive. At first glance, the orchids may seem like a liability, and in fact, they often carry genes that make them susceptible to mood disorders and psychological disease. The astounding part of Dobbs' report is that he shows that given the right care, or environment, the orchids don't just do OK, but far surpass the dandelions in perfomance. In other words, given the right training, orchids may in fact be destined for greatness.
I just finished reading Dave Dobbs' new article in the the December issue of The Atlantic, "The Science of Success". Dobbs turns the classic question of Nature vs. Nurture, whether our genes or our environment are the deterministic drivers of our fate, on its head. Traditionally, those who support "nature" say that our genes are most influential in defining us. On the other hand, those that support the "nurture" side say that our environment plays a more important role. Based on new research, Dobbs introduces the idea of two types of people, "dandelions" and "orchids". Dandelions can thrive anywhere, despite their environment or upbringing. Orchids, however, are more temperamental, and require a stable environment to survive. At first glance, the orchids may seem like a liability, and in fact, they often carry genes that make them susceptible to mood disorders and psychological disease. The astounding part of Dobbs' report is that he shows that given the right care, or environment, the orchids don't just do OK, but far surpass the dandelions in perfomance. In other words, given the right training, orchids may in fact be destined for greatness.
This finding redefines conditions we typically may have classified as undesirable. ADHD, depression, and generalized anxiety disorder, are no longer conditions to dread, because given the right training, people with these predispositions may in fact be the true "movers and shakers" in the world.
Please read the full article for yourself. And, as always, I'd welcome a discussion here...
Why Behavior Change Is (Still) Better Medicine Than Drugs
While attending the Institute for the Future's Health Horizons Fall Conference on Monday, one thing became eminently clear. The 21st century will be the era of brain, the last great scientific frontier. Due to societal shifts, environmental changes, and the fact that we are just living longer, we are poised to see a sharp rise in cases of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, autism, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The only thing worse than the increasing prevalence of brain disease is the sobering fact that few viable treatments currently exist.
While attending the Institute for the Future's Health Horizons Fall Conference on Monday, one thing became eminently clear. The 21st century will be the era of brain, the last great scientific frontier. Due to societal shifts, environmental changes, and the fact that we are just living longer, we are poised to see a sharp rise in cases of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, autism, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The only thing worse than the increasing prevalence of brain disease is the sobering fact that few viable treatments currently exist.
For years, we've heard the mantra of behavior change and health. Exercise more and you'll cut your risk for heart disease and stroke. Eat more fruits and vegetables and you can decrease your risk for colon cancer (or possibly prostate cancer, as discussed in a previous Decision Tree post, "Why Behavior Change is Better Medicine than Drugs"). Could behavior change serve our brain health as well as it did other organs of the body?
On Monday, the neurotechnology community drew a definitive line in the sand with regard to treating the brain. On one side were panelists that believed that society is not being medicated enough for mental disorders, including ADHD in children. On the other side, proponents of behavioral training argued that brain plasticity, the innate ability of the brain to rewire itself continuously throughout life, is our best bet to combat brain disease.
Consider the use of ADHD drugs in children, or cognitive-enhancing drugs, such as modafinil, by professionals (including a large group of scientists) in the workplace. Proponents of medication say that the cognitive enhancers are not doing anything unnatural. Rather, they are taking someone who's a mediocre performer in terms of concentration, and simply moving them to the upper 90th percentile. Then, according to the same logic, I guess these panelists would also support legalizing steroids in major league baseball. After all, the steroids are not making the athletes super-human. Rather, they're taking the middle-of-the-road performers and nudging them to the upper echelon of the sport. Hmmm....
My former postdoc advisor, Dr. Michael Merzenich of the University of California San Francisco, led the charge for behavioral training as a better alternative to drugs for diseases of the brain. Mike's lifelong work focused on the neuroscience of learning, and how brain plasticity occurs at various stages of development. He believes that many ailments of the brain, including ADHD, occur because we are using our brains "incorrectly", but specific behavioral training can reverse and improve these deficits.
The wonders of behavioral training and brain plasticity are not limited to sparse findings in a dark lab. In fact, Mike's most promising research has been translated into several commercial computer software applications, which have enhanced the reading capabilities of dyslexic children, as well as improved the speech processing and memory of senior citizens.
Whether you are sold on behavioral training as a feasible alternative to drug therapy in brain illness or not, one point remains solid: the cost of conducting clinical trials for behavioral training regiments is a mere fraction of the cost of drug trials. Given that it's terribly expensive to run drug trials, and that only a small fraction of drugs in a pharma company's pipeline succeeds in the clinic, we clearly can't afford to ignore behavioral training as a new way to treat the brain.
Pregnancy: Epigenetic and Developmental Links
There were two posts at ScienceDaily today that discussed the consequences of mothers' choices during pregnancy on the future health of their children. The first stated that the children of mothers that smoked cigarettes during pregnancy were more likely to smoke in the future, and would find it harder to quit if they tried. The second discussed the link between obese pregnant mothers and children who developed asthma. Presumably, obesity causes a pro-inflammatory response, which may predispose the fetus to cytokines that cause respiratory inflammation that leads to the development of asthma in later life. These posts have me thinking about just how much a mother's life affects a fetus during pregnancy at the epigentic and developmental levels. In my preliminary search, I've found a couple other interesting stories. One article discussed how maternal feeding affects the biological clock of the fetus. Another report talked about how maternal exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) changes fetal gene expression.
There were two posts at ScienceDaily today that discussed the consequences of mothers' choices during pregnancy on the future health of their children. The first stated that the children of mothers that smoked cigarettes during pregnancy were more likely to smoke in the future, and would find it harder to quit if they tried. The second discussed the link between obese pregnant mothers and children who developed asthma. Presumably, obesity causes a pro-inflammatory response, which may predispose the fetus to cytokines that cause respiratory inflammation that leads to the development of asthma in later life. These posts have me thinking about just how much a mother's life affects a fetus during pregnancy at the epigentic and developmental levels. In my preliminary search, I've found a couple other interesting stories. One article discussed how maternal feeding affects the biological clock of the fetus. Another report talked about how maternal exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) changes fetal gene expression.
Does anyone have any interesting links on this topic to share?