Health UK (Commonwealth Union) – Stunted growth in infancy, often linked to factors such as inadequate nutrition and poor health, is a critical issue that significantly impacts a child’s cognitive development. This phenomenon has garnered increasing attention from researchers, educators, and health professionals due to its far-reaching consequences on a child’s overall well-being.
Stunted growth refers to a condition where a child’s height falls below the expected range for their age, reflecting a failure to reach their full growth potential. The early years of life, especially between six to nine months, are crucial for physical and cognitive development. Factors such as poor nutrition, chronic illnesses, and inadequate healthcare can contribute to stunted growth, posing a significant threat to a child’s overall health.
New research from the University of East Anglia reveals that children who are shorter than their peers for their age may experience diminished cognitive abilities as early as six months old due to variations in brain function. The study, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, examined the ‘visual working memory,’ responsible for holding visual information for processing, in children with stunted growth compared to those with typical growth.
The findings show that infants who have poor physical growth show disruptions in their visual working memory, rendering them more susceptible to distractions and establishing a foundation for lower cognitive abilities a year later. While stunted growth has previously been associated with cognitive challenges later in life, this study marks the first identification of this link in infancy. Furthermore, it is the inaugural instance where stunted growth is correlated with functional disparities in early brain development.
Led by Professor John Spencer from UEA’s School of Psychology, the research team conducted the first-ever brain imaging study of its kind, involving over 200 children.
“We expected that poor growth might impact cognition in early development, but it was striking to see this at the level of brain function,” explained Professor 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” added Dr Sobana Wijeakumar, 1st author of the study.
Dr. Wijeakumar serves as an Assistant Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham.
The cognitive abilities and brain activity of infants were evaluated between six to nine months, with a follow-up on cognitive ability one year later.
The findings revealed that infants experiencing ‘stunted growth,’ often linked to inadequate nutrition or poor health, exhibited significantly lower cognitive abilities at both assessment points compared to their typically developing peers.
Interestingly, children who defied this trend, performing well in their second year of cognitive testing despite limited growth, were those with unexpectedly robust visual memory during the initial six to nine months.
This discovery suggests that interventions to enhance working memory and address distractibility in children during their critical early months may mitigate or prevent cognitive disadvantages later in life.
The study underscores the significance of investigating brain function during early development. During early development all factors impacting the brain have been a key focus for scientists across the world due to the possible long-term effects.
Conducted in collaboration with the University of Nottingham, the Community Empowerment Lab, Durham University, University of Iowa, Rhode Island Hospital, Brown University, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the research was led by the University of East Anglia. The findings are published under the title ‘Stunting in infancy is associated with atypical activation of working memory and attention networks’ in Nature Human Behaviour.
