Stunting, or linear growth failure, affects 150 million children worldwide and their capacity to learn and earn money. Infants are subjected to a variety of pressures during their early years, including not eating enough, being unwell, and not having enough opportunities to play and learn social skills, all of which can lead to vitamin deficiencies. Stunting has been linked to poor problem-solving skills and lower academic attainment in children. Cognitive processes such as visual working memory (VWM), which aid in processing information about things viewed while working, contribute to this. However, it is unclear what explains the association between stunting and VWM.
This study used multiple approaches to investigate how risk factors at the child level affect cognitive ability and brain function in children. In a longitudinal study, we compared the Bayley-III scores of stunted children to those of undernourished children of normal height at age two. We also compared the motor, linguistic, adaptive behavior, and cognitive scores. We also employed fMRI and RT-EEG to assess brain activity.
We conducted behavioral and neuroimaging tests on babies aged 6 and 9 months to investigate the brain circuits.
We discovered that the percentage of stunted children was a substantial predictor of cognitive performance, even after controlling for nutritional intake and family wealth. This is consistent with the assumption that poor growth early in life, particularly in newborns, harms brain development and persists until the kid enters school.
We conducted behavioral and neuroimaging tests on babies aged 6 and 9 months to investigate the brain circuits associated with VWM processing and problem-solving abilities.
Young children were assigned a VWM assignment in which the side of the screen displaying an object shifted each time. The number of squares visible on each side and the position of the changing section could vary. We investigated how the left anterior intraparietal sulcus (laIPS) was active in a different trial during the task.
Stunted newborns responded more strongly to the side of the screen, which did not change.
The superior laIPS cluster on the brain picture had a main effect and an interaction effect of HAZ, load, and chromophore. Infants of medium height employed laIPS load-dependent, with decreasing activation as the VWM load rose.
During this pattern of activation, rTPJ activity was reduced. This is assumed to be associated with bottom-up shifts in attention away from ongoing task-related activities.
On the other hand, stunted newborns responded more strongly to the side of the screen, which did not change, indicating more activity in laIPS. This occurred concurrently with a worse rTPJ decrease associated with poor CP scores. We also discovered that HAZ was negatively associated with global FC in theta and beta bands at 36 months old. This indicates that neuronal maturation was retarded in these brain regions.
Based on these findings, issues in these brain pathways link stunting to cognitive performance. This study demonstrates how critical it is to identify and implement treatments that assist children whose growth is halting to improve their mental health and economic well-being in the future.
