Month: September 2019

This study examined the interaction of early rearing environment and genetic background on the development of social behaviors in mice. Most research on the effects of early experience on development focuses on the timing and type of early perturbations. To date comparatively little research has focused on the role of genetic variation in how the nervous system interprets a particular type of experience. This study examines how genetic makeup might produce different responses, in adult mice, to early experiences. The study examined the response of several different strains of mice to varying periods of handling. Replicating earlier studies in rats, this experiment showed that animals handled daily for a relatively short period of time as infants show less response to stress as adults, compared to normal animals and animals handled daily for a very long period of time.

These experiments are the first step in laying the groundwork for significant …

Despite much publicity in recent years that has suggested in unqualified terms that the first two or three years of life are critical in fostering healthy brain development and, in turn, healthy behavioral development, the reality is that we know very little about brain development in the human and even less about the role of experience in sculpting the developing brain. We know much less than the public has been led to believe over the past two years, and knowing as little as we do places profound constraints on our ability to intervene at an early age.

While we have data from many quarters—but notably from studies of deprivation—that clearly point to the importance of the first two to three years of life as playing a critical role in fostering healthy neural and psychological development, we have amazingly little data on exactly which aspects of experience are essential to development …

Infants of diabetic mothers (IDMs) are at increased risk for cognitive impairments, possibly due to alterations in fetal brain growth and development. The purpose of this longitudinal study is to evaluate the neural bases of cognitive impairments in IDMs. In this first phase, we evaluated neonatal brain function in 21 IDMs studied at term compared with 22 full-term, healthy control infants using event-related potentials (ERPs).

The ERP technique is an electrophysiologic method which can be used to study regional brain function and cognitive function. Brain activity was recorded over midline and lateral scalp sites while infants were presented with two sets of stimuli designed to evaluate auditory brain maturation cortical responses to speech and non-speech stimuli. Auditory recognition memory was evaluated using voice recordings of each infant’s mother and a stranger (both said “baby”). Each set of stimuli was edited to the same duration and peak sound level and represented …