Welcome to our Publication of the Month news release series, where we highlight some of the work that is taking place within the School of Psychology. This month, we are featuring a journal from Dr. Sobana Wijeakumar, titled: ‘Stunting in infancy is associated with atypical activation of working memory and attention networks‘. Sobana has put together a few words summarising her research:
“Stunting or linear growth faltering is formally defined as height-for-age less than two standard deviations of the median of WHO Child Growth Standards. This condition often begins in utero and continues to unfold within the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. It is caused by a combination of factors such as poor nutrition, inadequate maternal health, exposure to infectious diseases and unhygienic environments, caregiver neglect and lack of stimulation. Stunting impacts ~150 million children under the age of 5 years worldwide and is associated with poor long-term cognitive, academic and economic outcomes, yet the mechanisms through which stunting impacts cognition in early development remain unknown.
To examine the impact of stunting in very early development, our team of researchers in the U.S., U.K, and India conducted the first-ever large-scale neuroimaging study in a LMIC sample of infants. We recorded brain activation from infants as they engaged with a visual task on a TV screen. We found that stunting impacted visual working memory, a critical cognitive system important for storing information for short periods of time. Specifically, stunted infants showed reduced visual working memory performance and greater distractibility compared to non-stunted infants. Poor performance was associated with reduced engagement of the left anterior intraparietal sulcus, a region involved in visual working memory maintenance and greater suppression in the right temporoparietal junction, a region involved in attentional shifting. We also assessed problem-solving scores in both groups of children one year later. We found that stunted infants showed lower problem-solving scores, while non-stunted infants with greater left anterior intraparietal sulcus activation showed higher problem-solving scores. In general, short-for-age infants with poor physical growth indices but good visual working memory performance showed more positive outcomes suggesting that intervention efforts should focus on improving working memory and reducing distractibility in infancy.”
If this article has caught your interest, you can read it at the following place: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/25273264/stunting-in-infancy-is-associated-with-atypical-activation-of-working-memory-and-attention-networks
Posted on Thursday 7th December 2023