Early nutrition can affect brain development

The foundations of cognitive health are laid very early in life. There is a link between poorer nutrition in the first years of life and lower intelligence levels in adolescence, even when other factors are taken into account.

Adolescence is the second key period of neuroplasticity after infancy. During this time, there are extensive structural and functional changes, which are partly due to hormonal and endocrine shifts during puberty.

However, the picture during adolescence itself is less clear. Some interventions are yielding encouraging results, but there is still insufficient data. Therefore, higher quality research is needed.: They will help to understand whether adolescence is really a second window of opportunity to support brain development through nutrition, or is it just a guess.

To reflect how brain development unfolds over time, the review authors relied on longitudinal studies (a research method in which data is collected from the same participants over a long period of time) . They studied the relationship between nutrition at an early age and subsequent cognitive abilities and academic performance. This approach, taking into account the entire life cycle, allows us to see how early nutrition affects the results years later: later abilities are formed on the basis of previous stages of development.

The scientists evaluated long-term data on a wide range of nutrients and dietary components. These include iron, iodine, choline, vitamin D, polyphenols, fatty acids, cereals, as well as complex interventions using multiple nutrients.

Although the results of different studies sometimes seem contradictory, the authors caution against concluding that nutrition has little effect on development. According to them, the effect of nutrients depends on a number of factors. These include the timing of nutritional exposure during development, the characteristics of the population being studied, the duration and type of intervention, and the specific cognitive abilities being measured.

To advance research in this area, the team has proposed seven guidelines for future studies. In particular, experts call for a whole-life-cycle approach, not limited to studying individual nutrients, the use of biologically validated biomarkers, the inclusion of analysis of puberty and sex differences, the standardization of outcome measures, the prioritization of context and population characteristics, and the control of key confounding factors.