A model for understanding nutrition, brain development
A review published in Advances in Nutrition shows that early-life nutrition may affect a baby’s development, especially in the brain.
A review published in Advances in Nutrition shows that early-life nutrition may affect a baby’s development, especially in the brain.
For nearly a decade, researchers at the University of Illinois have studied the piglet as a translational model to understand which aspects of early brain development are affected by nutrition interventions. Because of similarities in human infant and piglet brain development patterns, studies using the piglet have helped lead to advances in pediatric nutrition.
The new paper highlights several studies on pediatric nutrition of which brain development outcomes were the primary interest. The paper also describes technologies, including advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), that are being used to assess brain development, as well as outlines areas for future nutrition and neurodevelopment research.
The researchers hope the review helps to standardize the types of outcomes that are used to assess brain development and then to find out which of those outcomes are sensitive to dietary interventions. Part of that is having a clear understanding of how the infant brain is developing in the early days and weeks after birth. MRI methods have allowed researchers to characterize volume changes in areas of the piglet brain from 2 to 24 weeks of age, showing a similar growth pattern as of that in human infants.
Previous nutrition research has focused on the effect of fatty acids in milk (or infant formula), but in the review the researchers discuss studies on other aspects of milk composition such as choline, iron, cholesterol, amino acids, milk fat globule membranes, and other milk bioactives, including sialic acid, gangliosides, and alpha-lipoic acid.
Another aspect of the review is a listing of techniques that are available and that have been used in assessing neurodevelopment in the piglet. Some of those techniques include advanced MRI methods, such as voxel-based morphometry, which compares gray and white matter tissue volumes, and diffusion tensor imaging, which measures microscopic water movement in the brain and helps infer structural changes.
Other techniques described involve behavioral assessments with piglets, such as spatial mazes, to assess learning and memory. References to what dietary references were used with each method have also been provided.