Good toothbrushing habits in children linked to mother's wellbeing

July 28, 2021

Science Daily/Tohoku University

A mother's mental health may play a larger role in a child's toothbrushing habits than previously thought.

It is no secret that brushing your teeth twice a day is highly effective in promoting healthy teeth and gums. The International Association of Pediatric Dentistry advocates brushing with toothpaste containing fluoride to prevent decayed, missing, or filled teeth -- known as childhood dental caries (ECC) -- in children.

Parents are instrumental in instilling good dental habits in their children.

In Japan, there is a worryingly high prevalence of ECC among children aged 3 years old. Postpartum depression and/or lack of affection caused by bonding disorders hamper a mother's ability to cultivate healthy dental practices in children, and researchers were keen to explore this link.

Dr Shinobu Tsuchiya from Tohoku University Hospital led a research group that analyzed approximately 80,000 mother-infant pairs from the Ministry of Environment's Japan Environment and Children's Study.

They found children with mothers suffering from postpartum depression or bonding disorders brushed their teeth less often. Likewise, the frequency with which children brushed their teeth increased when mothers showed strong affection towards their children.

The research group hopes their research will foster greater mental support and management for mothers and that doctors will incorporate these factors when assessing children's oral health.

"A mother's psychological well-being provides valuable screening information for identifying children at a high risk of ECC," said Tsuchiya

In future studies, Tsuchiya and her team hope to examine other environmental influences on poor oral health.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210728105646.htm

Postmenopausal women can dance their way to better health

July 28, 2021

Science Daily/The North American Menopause Society (NAMS)

Women often struggle with managing their weight and other health risk factors, such as high cholesterol, once they transition through menopause. A new study suggests that dancing may effectively lower cholesterol levels, improve fitness and body composition and in the process, improve self-esteem. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

After menopause, women are more likely to experience weight gain, overall/central body adiposity increases, and metabolic disturbances, such as increases in triglycerides and bad cholesterol. Together, these changes ultimately increase cardiovascular risk. Around this same time, women often are less physically active, which translates into reductions in lean mass and an increased risk of falls and fractures. As a result of all these changes, postmenopausal women often suffer from decreased self-image and self-esteem, which are directly related to overall mental health.

Physical activity has been shown to minimize some of the many health problems associated with menopause. The effect of dancing, specifically, has already been investigated with regard to how it improves body composition and functional fitness. Few studies, however, have investigated the effects of dance on body image, self-esteem, and physical fitness together in postmenopausal women.

This new study was designed to analyze the effects of dance practice on body composition, metabolic profile, functional fitness, and self-image/self-esteem in postmenopausal women. Although the sample size was small, the study suggested some credible benefits of a three-times-weekly dance regimen in improving not only the lipid profile and functional fitness of postmenopausal women but also self-image and self-esteem.

Dance therapy is seen as an attractive option because it is a pleasant activity with low associated costs and low risk of injury for its practitioners. Additional confirmed benefits of regular dancing include improvement in balance, postural control, gait, strength, and overall physical performance. All of these benefits may contribute to a woman's ability to maintain an independent, high-quality lifestyle throughout her lifespan.

Study results are published in the article "Dance practice modifies functional fitness, lipid profile, and self-image in postmenopausal women."

"This study highlights the feasibility of a simple intervention, such as a dance class three times weekly, for improving not only fitness and metabolic profile but also self-image and self-esteem in postmenopausal women. In addition to these benefits, women also probably enjoyed a sense of comradery from the shared experience of learning something new," says Dr. Stephanie Faubion, NAMS medical director.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210728105640.htm

Physical activity protects children from the adverse effects of digital media on their weight later in adolescence

August 9, 2021

Science Daily/University of Helsinki

Children's heavy digital media use is associated with a risk of being overweight later in adolescence. Physical activity protects children from the adverse effects of digital media on their weight later in adolescence.

A recently completed study shows that six hours of leisure-time physical activity per week at the age of 11 reduces the risk of being overweight at 14 years of age associated with heavy use of digital media.

Obesity in children and adolescents is one of the most significant health-related challenges globally. A study carried out by the Folkhälsan Research Center and the University of Helsinki investigated whether a link exists between the digital media use of Finnish school-age children and the risk of being overweight later in adolescence. In addition, the study looked into whether children's physical activity has an effect on this potential link.

The results were published in the Journal of Physical Activity and Health.

More than six hours of physical activity per week appears to reverse adverse effects of screen time

The study involved 4,661 children from the Finnish Health in Teens (Fin-HIT) study. The participating children reported how much time they spent on sedentary digital media use and physical activity outside school hours. The study demonstrated that heavy use of digital media at 11 years of age was associated with a heightened risk of being overweight at 14 years of age in children who reported engaging in under six hours per week of physical activity in their leisure time. In children who reported being physically active for six or more hours per week, such a link was not observed.

The study also took into account other factors potentially impacting obesity, such as childhood eating habits and the amount of sleep, as well as the amount of digital media use and physical activity in adolescence. In spite of the confounding factors, the protective role of childhood physical activity in the connection between digital media use in childhood and being overweight later in life was successfully confirmed.

Activity according to recommendations

"The effect of physical activity on the association between digital media use and being overweight has not been extensively investigated in follow-up studies so far," says Postdoctoral Researcher Elina Engberg.

Further research is needed to determine in more detail how much sedentary digital media use increases the risk of being overweight, and how much physical activity is needed, and at what intensity, to ward off such a risk. In this study, the amount of physical activity and use of digital media was reported by the children themselves, and the level of their activity was not surveyed, so there is a need for further studies.

"A good rule of thumb is to adhere to the physical activity guidelines for children and adolescents, according to which school-aged children and adolescents should be physically active in a versatile, brisk and strenuous manner for at least 60 minutes a day in a way that suits the individual, considering their age," says Engberg. In addition, excessive and extended sedentary activity should be avoided.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210809144112.htm

Exercise may boost kids’ vocabulary growth

New study suggests exercise can boost kids’ vocabulary growth

July 28, 2021

Science Daily/University of Delaware

Swimming a few laps likely won't turn your child into the next Katie Ledecky or Michael Phelps, but it just might help them become the next J.K. Rowling or Stephen King.

A recent study by University of Delaware researchers suggests exercise can boost kids' vocabulary growth. The article, published in the Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, details one of the first studies on the effect of exercise on vocabulary learning in children.

Children ages 6 to 12 were taught new words before doing one of three things -- swimming, taking part in CrossFit exercises or completing a coloring sheet. The children who swam were 13% more accurate in follow up tests of the vocabulary words.

It makes sense to the lead researcher, Maddy Pruitt, herself a former college swimmer who now regularly takes CrossFit classes. "Motor movement helps in encoding new words," she said, explaining that exercise is known to increase levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein Pruitt describes as the "Miracle-Gro of the brain."

Why then, did swimming make a difference while CrossFit did not? Pruitt attributes it to the amount of energy each exercise demands of the brain. Swimming is an activity the kids could complete without much thought or instruction. It was more automatic, while the CrossFit exercises were new to them. The children needed to learn the moves, which required mental energy.

Pruitt conducted the research as part of her Master's Capstone Project and graduated in 2020. She now works as a speech language pathologist at an elementary school in South Carolina, where she puts her findings into practice.

"My sessions are very rarely at a table," she said. "I'll take my kids out to the playground or we'll take a walk around the school."

Pruitt's adviser and coauthor Giovanna Morini is building on the findings in her lab. Morini, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, said most research into exercise examines it from the angle of a healthy lifestyle, not much enters the domain of language acquisition. She said she sees this as a rich line of inquiry and has another student running a similar experiment now with toddlers.

"We were so excited about this study because it applies to clinicians, caregivers and educators who can put it into practice," Morini said. "It's simple stuff, nothing out of the ordinary. But it could really help boost the outcomes."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210728105611.htm

Living near woodlands is good for children and young people's mental health

July 19, 2021

Science Daily/University College London

Analysis of children and young people's proximity to woodlands has shown links with better cognitive development and a lower risk of emotional and behavioural problems, in research led by UCL and Imperial College London scientists that could influence planning decisions in urban areas.

In what is believed to be one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers used longitudinal data relating to 3,568 children and teenagers, aged nine to 15 years, from 31 schools across London. This period is a key time in the development of adolescents' thinking, reasoning and understanding of the world.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability, looked at the links between different types of natural urban environments and the pupils' cognitive development, mental health and overall well-being.

The environments were divided into what planners call green space (woods, meadows and parks) and blue space (rivers, lakes and the sea), with green space separated further into grassland and woodland. Researchers used satellite data to help calculate each adolescent's daily exposure rate to each of these environments within 50m, 100m, 250m and 500m of their home and school.

After adjusting for other variables, the results showed that higher daily exposure to woodland (but not grassland) was associated with higher scores for cognitive development, and a 16% lower risk of emotional and behavioural problems two years later.

A similar but smaller effect was seen for green space, with higher scores for cognitive development, but this was not seen for blue space. The researchers note though that access to blue space in the cohort studied was generally low.

Examples of other explanatory variables considered included the young person's age, ethnic background, gender, parental occupation and type of school, e.g., state or independent. The level of air pollution might have influenced adolescents' cognitive development, but researchers did not feel these observations were reliable or conclusive, and these require further investigations.

It is already estimated that one in 10 of London's children and adolescents between the ages of five and 16 suffer from a clinical mental health illness and excess costs are estimated between £11,030 and £59,130 annually for each person. As with adults, there is also evidence that natural environments play an important role in children and adolescents' cognitive development and mental health into adulthood, but less is known about why this is.

The results of this study suggest that urban planning decisions to optimise ecosystem benefits linked to cognitive development and mental health should carefully consider the type of natural environment included. Natural environments further away from an adolescent's residence and school may play an important role too, not just their immediate environment.

Lead author, PhD student Mikaël Maes (UCL Geography, UCL Biosciences and Imperial College London School of Public Health) said: "Previous studies have revealed positive associations between exposure to nature in urban environments, cognitive development and mental health. Why these health benefits are received remains unclear, especially in adolescents.

"These findings contribute to our understanding of natural environment types as an important protective factor for an adolescent's cognitive development and mental health and suggest that not every environment type may contribute equally to these health benefits.

"Forest bathing, for example (being immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of a forest), is a relaxation therapy that has been associated with physiological benefits, supporting the human immune function, reducing heart rate variability and salivary cortisol, and various psychological benefits. However, the reasons why we experience these psychological benefits from woodland remain unknown."

Joint senior author Professor Mireille Toledano (Director, Mohn Centre for Children's Health and Wellbeing and Investigator, MRC Centre for Environment and Health and Principal Investigator of the SCAMP study, Imperial College London) said: "It's been suggested previously that the benefits of natural environments to mental health are comparable in magnitude to family history, parental age and even more significant than factors like the degree of urbanisation around you, but lower than your parents' socio-economic status. Sensory and non-sensory pathways have been suggested as potentially important for delivering cognition and mental health benefits received from exposure to nature.

"It's critical for us to tease out why natural environments are so important to our mental health throughout the life course -- does the benefit derive from the physical exercise we do in these environments, from the social interactions we often have in them, or from the fauna and flora we get to enjoy in these environments or a combination of all of these?"

Joint senior author Professor Kate Jones (UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, UCL Biosciences) said: "One possible explanation for our findings may be that audio-visual exposure through vegetation and animal abundance provides psychological benefits, of which both features are expected in higher abundance in woodland. Even though our results show that urban woodland is associated with adolescent's cognitive development and mental health, the cause of this association remains unknown. Further research is fundamental to our understanding of the links between nature and health."

To arrive at the findings, researchers analysed a longitudinal dataset of 3,568 adolescents between 2014 and 2018, whose residence was known, from the Study of Cognition, Adolescents and Mobile Phones (SCAMP) across the London metropolitan area. They assessed adolescents' mental health and overall well-being from a self-reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) -- covering areas such as emotional problems, conduct, hyperactivity and peer problems -- and the KIDSCREEN-10 Questionnaire taken by each adolescent for SCAMP.

Limitations of the study include an assumption that living or going to school near natural environments means more exposure to them, which may not always be the case due to how easily they can be accessed by a child or young person or how usable they are.

Also, a considerable proportion of the participants (52.21%) were in the group whose parents had a managerial/professional occupation, so adolescents in less favourable socio-economic groups may be underrepresented and pupils requiring special needs may be differently affected compared with their peers. Crime rates, which may have influenced the results too, were not taken into account.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210719120313.htm

Adult children with college degrees influence parents' health in later life

July 14, 2021

Science Daily/University at Buffalo

Having no children who completed college is negatively associated with parents' self-rated health and positively associated with depressive symptoms. Additionally, among parents with the highest propensity for having no children who complete college, the consequences on depressive symptoms are greatest.

Write down the benefits of obtaining a college degree and, more than likely, all the items on the completed list will relate to graduates: higher salaries, autonomous jobs and better access to health care, for instance. All of those factors, supported by extensive research, help draw a direct line connecting higher education and health. Similar research suggests how the education of parents affects their children.

Now, two University at Buffalo sociologists have used a new wave of data from a survey launched in 1994 to further extend the geometry linking educational attainment and health that demonstrates another dimension of the intergenerational effects of completing college. Their findings published recently in the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences suggest that adult children's educational attainment has an impact on their parents' mental and physical health.

"By analyzing these data we arrived at the conclusion that it was detrimental to parents' self-reported health and depressive symptoms if none of their children completed college," says Christopher Dennison, PhD, assistant professor of sociology in UB's College of Arts and Sciences, and a co-author of the paper with UB colleague Kristen Schultz Lee, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology. "The negative mental health outcome of the parents was in fact our strongest finding."

Dennison and Lee have both used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) in their previous research. Add Health is a nationally representative longitudinal study of over 20,000 adolescents. It is the largest such survey of its kind. There was an initial wave of data on the parents (ages 30-60) when the survey began and another wave of data from roughly 2,000 of those original participants (now ages 50-80) gathered from 2015-17.

It's this latter data set that provided the researchers an opportunity to look at the intergenerational relationship between parents and children over time, while statistically balancing factors that could influence an aging parent's health.

"These results are particularly important in light of growing educational inequalities in the U.S. in the last several decades," says Lee. "We know how our own education impacts our own health; we know how parents' education impacts their children in many different ways; now we're trying to add to that understanding by explaining how children's education can have an impact on their parents.

"One thing I thought particularly interesting about these findings is that those parents who are the least likely to have a child attain a college education (low socioeconomic status) seem to benefit the most from a child having a college degree."

Dennison and Lee speculate on a number of elements that might be driving this association, including anxiety, assistance and lifestyle.

"Parents whose children have lower levels of education might spend more time worrying about their children. That has negative implications for their mental health and their self-rated health," says Lee. "Kids without a degree might need more help from their parents and are also less able to provide help if needed in return.

"Another possibility is that educated children might be doing a better job of helping their parents live healthier lives by encouraging exercise and a sensible diet."

What's clear is the evidence pointing to how the benefits of a college degree show up in the parents' health later in life.

"In this era when a college degree is of ever-growing importance, we see how the long-term investment in education is advantageous to the adult child's health, but also has benefits down the road for their parents too," says Dennison.

And it's this idea of an investment that speaks to how educational attainment reaches across generations from a policy perspective.

"Historically, there has been a debate over whether or not different generations are at odds with one another, with one generation taking resources away from another older or younger generation," says Lee. "But our findings point to the fundamentally inter-related nature of the interests and needs of different generations.

"Investing in one generation, in this case, positively benefits another generation."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210714151205.htm

Antibiotics in early life could affect brain development

July 14, 2021

Science Daily/Rutgers University

Antibiotic exposure early in life could alter human brain development in areas responsible for cognitive and emotional functions, according to a Rutgers researcher.

The laboratory study, published in the journal iScience, suggests that penicillin changes the microbiome -- the trillions of beneficial microorganisms that live in and on our bodies -- as well as gene expression, which allows cells to respond to its changing environment, in key areas of the developing brain. The findings suggest reducing widespread antibiotic use or using alternatives when possible to prevent neurodevelopment problems.

Penicillin and related medicines (like ampicillin and amoxicillin) are the most widely used antibiotics in children worldwide. In the United States, the average child receives nearly three courses of antibiotics before the age of 2. Similar or greater exposure rates occur in many other countries.

"Our previous work has shown that exposing young animals to antibiotics changes their metabolism and immunity. The third important development in early life involves the brain. This study is preliminary but shows a correlation between altering the microbiome and changes in the brain that should be further explored," said lead author Martin Blaser, director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers.

The study compared mice that were exposed to low-dose penicillin in utero or immediately after birth to those that were not exposed. They found that mice given penicillin experienced substantial changes in their intestinal microbiota and had altered gene expression in the frontal cortex and amygdala, two key areas in the brain responsible for the development of memory as well as fear and stress responses.

A growing body of evidence links phenomena in the intestinal tract with signaling to the brain, a field of study known as the "gut-brain-axis." If this pathway is disturbed, it can lead to permanent altering of the brain's structure and function and possibly lead to neuropsychiatric or neurodegenerative disorders in later childhood or adulthood.

"Early life is a critical period for neurodevelopment," Blaser said. "In recent decades, there has been a rise in the incidence of childhood neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder and learning disabilities. Although increased awareness and diagnosis are likely contributing factors, disruptions in cerebral gene expression early in development also could be responsible."

Future studies are needed to determine whether antibiotics directly effect brain development or if molecules from the microbiome that travel to the brain disturb gene activity and cause cognitive deficits.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210714110520.htm

Species of gut bacteria linked to enhanced cognition and language skills in infant boys

Study offers compelling new evidence pointing to the importance of gut bacteria for neurodevelopment

July 13, 2021

Science Daily/University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry

Infant boys with a higher composition of a particular gut microbiota show enhanced neurodevelopment, according to a new study.

The University of Alberta-led research followed more than 400 infants from the CHILD Cohort Study (CHILD) at its Edmonton site. Boys with a gut bacterial composition that was high in the bacteria Bacteroidetes at one year of age were found to have more advanced cognition and language skills one year later. The finding was specific to male children.

"It's well known that female children score higher (at early ages), especially in cognition and language," said Anita Kozyrskyj, a professor of pediatrics at the U of A and principal investigator of the SyMBIOTA (Synergy in Microbiota) laboratory. "But when it comes to gut microbial composition, it was the male infants where we saw this obvious connection between the Bacteroidetes and the improved scores."

"The differences between male and female gut microbiota are very subtle, but we do know from CHILD Cohort Study data that girls at early ages are more likely to have more of these Bacteroidetes. So perhaps most girls have a sufficient number of Bacteroidetes and that's why they have improved scores over boys," added Kozyrskyj.

The researchers, led by Kozyrskyj and associate professor of pediatrics Piush Mandhane, studied bacteria found in fecal samples from the infants and identified three different groups exhibiting similar dominant clusters of bacteria. They then evaluated the infants on a variety of neural developmental scales. Of those groups, only the male infants with Bacteroidetes-dominant bacteria showed signs of enhanced neurodevelopment.

The research replicates similar findings from a U.S. study that also showed an association between Bacteroidetes and neural development.

According to Kozyrskyj, Bacteroidetes are one of a very few bacteria that produce metabolites called sphingolipids, which are instrumental for the formation and structure of neurons in the brain.

"It makes sense that if you have more of these microbes and they produce more sphingolipids, then you should see some improvement in terms of the formation of neuron connections in our brain and improved scores in cognition and language," she said.

According to Kozyrskyj, caesarean birth is one factor that can significantly deplete Bacteroidetes. Factors that positively influence gut microbiota composition in infants include breastfeeding, having a high-fibre diet, living with a dog and being exposed to nature and green spaces.

While the findings don't necessarily mean children with a lower proportion of Bacteroidetes will remain behind their peers in later childhood or adulthood, the researchers believe the study offers early promise ahttps://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210728105611.htms a way to potentially identify children at risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.

The team will continue to follow the infants participating in CHILD to determine whether the findings can be predictive of autism or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Moving forward, the researchers are also examining several other factors that may have an impact on neurodevelopment in infants, including stress and gut colonization by the bacterium Clostridium difficile.

"Over the first one to two years of life, your brain is very malleable," said Kozyrskyj. "Now we're seeing a connection between its malleability and gut microbiota, and I think that is very important."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210713145850.htm

Air pollution exposure linked to poor academics in childhood

July 13, 2021

Science Daily/Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

Children exposed to elevated levels of air pollution may be more likely to have poor inhibitory control during late childhood and poor academic skills in early adolescence, including spelling, reading comprehension, and math skills. Difficulty with inhibition in late childhood was found to be a precursor to later air pollution-related academic problems. Interventions that target inhibitory control might improve outcomes.

Results of the study by researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center are published in the journal Environmental Research.

"Children with poor inhibitory control are less able to override a common response in favor of a more unusual one -- such as the natural response to say 'up' when an arrow is facing up or 'go' when a light is green -- and instead say 'down' or 'stop,'" says first author Amy Margolis, PhD, associate professor of medical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. "By compromising childhood inhibitory control, prenatal exposure to air pollution may alter the foundation upon which later academic skills are built."

"When evaluating student's learning problems and formulating treatment plans, parents and teachers should consider that academic problems related to environmental exposures may require intervention focused on inhibitory control problems, rather than on content-related skill deficits, as is typical in interventions designed to address learning disabilities," Margolis adds.

"This study adds to a growing body of literature showing the deleterious health effects of prenatal exposure to air pollution on child health outcomes, including academic achievement," says co-author Julie Herbstman, PhD, CCCEH director and associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman School. "Reducing levels of air pollution may prevent these adverse outcomes and lead to improvements in children's academic achievement."

The new findings align with prior Columbia research finding a DNA marker for PAH exposure was associated with altered development of self-regulatory capacity and ADHD symptoms.

The study followed 200 children enrolled in a longitudinal cohort study in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx led by CCCEH researchers. Researchers collected measures of prenatal airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH, a major component of air pollution) during the third trimester of pregnancy, a period when the fetus is highly vulnerable to environmental insults. Tests of inhibitory control were administered at or around age 10 and tests of academic achievement, at or around age 13.

Inhibitory Control and Learning

When students learn new concepts, they often need to override a previous habit in order to incorporate a new rule into a skill. For example, when learning to read a vowel a child will learn that the letter a has a short vowel sound "a as in apple" but a long sound when the consonant is followed by a "magic e," as in "rate."

Children exposed to elevated levels of air pollution may be more likely to have poor inhibitory control during late childhood and poor academic skills in early adolescence, including spelling, reading comprehension, and math skills. Difficulty with inhibition in late childhood was found to be a precursor to later air pollution-related academic problems. Interventions that target inhibitory control might improve outcomes.

Results of the study by researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center are published in the journal Environmental Research.

"Children with poor inhibitory control are less able to override a common response in favor of a more unusual one -- such as the natural response to say 'up' when an arrow is facing up or 'go' when a light is green -- and instead say 'down' or 'stop,'" says first author Amy Margolis, PhD, associate professor of medical psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. "By compromising childhood inhibitory control, prenatal exposure to air pollution may alter the foundation upon which later academic skills are built."

"When evaluating student's learning problems and formulating treatment plans, parents and teachers should consider that academic problems related to environmental exposures may require intervention focused on inhibitory control problems, rather than on content-related skill deficits, as is typical in interventions designed to address learning disabilities," Margolis adds.

"This study adds to a growing body of literature showing the deleterious health effects of prenatal exposure to air pollution on child health outcomes, including academic achievement," says co-author Julie Herbstman, PhD, CCCEH director and associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia Mailman School. "Reducing levels of air pollution may prevent these adverse outcomes and lead to improvements in children's academic achievement."

The new findings align with prior Columbia research finding a DNA marker for PAH exposure was associated with altered development of self-regulatory capacity and ADHD symptoms.

The study followed 200 children enrolled in a longitudinal cohort study in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx led by CCCEH researchers. Researchers collected measures of prenatal airborne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH, a major component of air pollution) during the third trimester of pregnancy, a period when the fetus is highly vulnerable to environmental insults. Tests of inhibitory control were administered at or around age 10 and tests of academic achievement, at or around age 13.

Inhibitory Control and Learning

When students learn new concepts, they often need to override a previous habit in order to incorporate a new rule into a skill. For example, when learning to read a vowel a child will learn that the letter a has a short vowel sound "a as in apple" but a long sound when the consonant is followed by a "magic e," as in "rate."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210713145849.htm

Newborns to three months should be stimulated to hold and reach for objects

July 8, 2021

Science Daily/Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo

Newborn infants and babies aged up to three months should be stimulated to manipulate objects and observe adults performing everyday tasks. This incentive helps their social, motor and cognitive development, researchers note in an article publishedin the May 2021 issue of the journal Infant Behavior & Development.

According to the authors, from the earliest age babies watch adults carrying out activities such as handling utensils and putting them away in drawers or closets. They should themselves have frequent contact with objects to develop the ability to hold things and reach out for them. Through social interaction, even newborns can learn to use their own bodies functionally and to perceive the links between their movements and their surroundings.

"We present evidence that neonatal imitation and manipulation activities are connected, and therefore propose stimulation practices based on seminal experimental designs where infants should be positioned in favorable postures to observe others acting in the world. This will have an impact on the way that early infants understand the social world and the chain of actions possible in this environment," they argue in the article.

The study was supported by FAPESP in partnership with the Maria Cecília Souto Vidigal Foundation (FMCSV).

For Priscilla Ferronato, a professor at the Health Sciences Institute of Paulista University (UNIP) in São Paulo, Brazil, and first author of the article, the study innovated by evidencing the link between social imitation and the motor system underlying manipulation. "Research published since 1970 has shown that babies can copy facial expressions as soon as they're born. We suggest they imitate manipulative motor actions just as much as expressions. When babies see adults using their hands, they copy the movements, and this helps them use their own hands," she said.

Babies are unable to reach for objects in the first three months of life. "Carers usually stimulate them to use their hands only after they learn the reaching movement," she said. "We propose the opposite: encouraging them to reach out before they can do so of their own accord."

In the article, the researchers present a review of the scientific literature on the subject and advocate a novel approach to the understanding of imitation and manual activities. The suggestions are based on the reproduction of scenarios that replicate experimental situations in classic studies of child development but are simple and easily adapted.

One of the exercises proposed consists of placing the baby's hands first on a smooth surface and then on an object with a rough surface to induce an awareness of the difference involved in terms of grasping and holding. Another is offering a finger for the baby to hold and smiling to reinforce the association between touch and visual stimulus.

A third proposal entails shining a flashlight or smartphone in a dimly lit room just above the baby's chest to stimulate use of the arms as the baby tries to seize the beam of light.

"We want this information to be made available to professionals in daycare centers for practical application, and also to parents because at this early age babies are usually at home. Many parents have no idea babies are capable of learning in the first two or three months of their lives," Ferronato said.

Last year the foundation published a book on interaction between parents or carers and infants (Primeiríssima Infância -- Interações: Comportamentos de pais e cuidadores de crianças de 0 a 3 anos), according to which 21% of parents interviewed said children start learning after the age of 6 months, while the same percentage thought the threshold was 1 year. Most of the 58% who answered that babies learn in the womb or start learning shortly after birth had a university degree and were relatively well-off.

Developing skills

Early childhood is defined in Brazilian law as the first six years of a person's life (Lei 13257/2016). Researchers and organizations often define infancy as the first three years of life. Around 10 million children can be classed as infants under this definition, according to data from the 2019 Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNAD) conducted by IBGE, Brazil's national census bureau.

The first 1,000 days, from conception to the child's second birthday, are considered the most important from the standpoint of physical and mental development. What happens in this period can determine countless factors in adulthood. Sometimes referred to as the "golden days," they are also crucial for learning because of the brain's plasticity.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210708135335.htm

Impulsiveness tied to faster eating in children, can lead to obesity

Research also suggests cravings after sight and/or smell of food linked to inability to self-soothe in kids

July 7, 2021

Science Daily/University at Buffalo

Children who eat slower are less likely to be extroverted and impulsive, according to a new study co-led by the University at Buffalo and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The research, which sought to uncover the relationship between temperament and eating behaviors in early childhood, also found that kids who were highly responsive to external food cues (the urge to eat when food is seen, smelled or tasted) were more likely to experience frustration and discomfort and have difficulties self-soothing.

These findings are critical because faster eating and greater responsiveness to food cues have been linked to obesity risk in children, says Myles Faith, PhD, co-author and professor of counseling, school and educational psychology in the UB Graduate School of Education.

The research, published in June in Pediatric Obesity, supports the integration of temperament into studies of and treatment for childhood obesity, a connection Faith deemed in need of further exploration in a previous study he co-led.

"Temperament is linked to many child developmental and behavioral outcomes, yet despite emerging evidence, few studies have examined its relationship with pediatric obesity," said co-lead investigator Robert Berkowitz, MD, emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Weight and Eating Disorders Research Program at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Co-lead investigator Alyssa Button, doctoral candidate in the UB Graduate School of Education, is the first author.

The researchers surveyed 28 participants beginning a family intervention program to reduce eating speed among 4- to 8-year-old children with or at risk for obesity.

The study examined the associations between three eating behaviors and three facets of temperament. The eating behaviors included responsiveness to feeling full (internal food cues); responsiveness to seeing, smelling and tasting food (external food cues); and eating speed. Temperament consisted of extroversion and impulsivity (also known as surgency); self-control; and the inability to self-sooth negative emotions such as anger, fear and sadness.

Among the findings is that children who respond well to feeling full exhibit more self-control. More research is needed to understand the role parents play in their children's temperament and eating behavior, says Button.

"Parents may use food to soothe temperamental children and ease negative emotions," says Button, also a senior research support specialist in the Department of Pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB. "Future research should examine the different ways parents feed their children in response to their temperament, as well as explore whether the relationship between temperament and eating behaviors is a two-way street. Could the habit of eating slower, over time, lead to lower impulsiveness?"

"This study established relationships between temperament and eating patterns in children; however, there is still the question of chicken-and-egg and which comes first?" says Faith. "Research that follows families over time is needed to untangle these developmental pathways."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210707140721.htm

Importance of teaching children about environmental issues

July 7, 2021

Science Daily/University of Exeter

Environmental education provision needs greater investment and innovation if future generations are to be able to respond fully to the climate emergency, experts have said.

The deepening environmental crisis will continue to worsen if there is not significant support and investment in environmental and science education, researchers have warned. Reforms would help young people to address the complex, interlinked and dynamic issues of our contemporary situation.

The experts argue Governments and other organisations must direct more funding to education innovation in response to consistent warnings from scientists about trends in the deteriorating state of ecosystems, biodiversity and climate, amongst other environmental issues.

Writing in Environmental Education Research, Alan Reid, from Monash University, Justin Dillon, from the University of Exeter, Jo-Anne Ferreira, from the University of Southern Queensland and Nicole Ardoin from Stanford University, who are senior editors of the journal, say environmental education is a "cornerstone for the social and environmental changes" needed in the future.

Environmental and science education helps people to identify fake information and ideologies, and understand and respond appropriately to warnings about the climate emergency.

They add that consensus on our environmental predicaments is not simply a matter for scientists, however. It must be supported by those in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, and wider society. Only then will contemporary calls by organisations such as UNEP and UNESCO that 'environmental education be a core component of all education systems at all levels by 2025', have a chance of gaining the multilateral and multileveled support the situation so urgently requires.

The academics highlight international surveys that show many governments continue to fail to support and invest enough in environmental and sustainability education across pre-school, school, college and university settings.

Professor Ferreira said: "The research base is clear about the superiority of whole-school approaches to quick curriculum fixes for addressing topics such as the climate emergency. The existential risk aspects also mean we need to look at investment and innovation in lifelong learning and non-school based provision, alongside examining the focus of current initial teacher education and continuing professional development."

Professor Reid said: "The popularity of outdoor education centres and activities are testament to the broader base of interest in environment and nature, as well as when arts, media and civil society addresses the climate crisis. Flagship environmental and science communication documentaries by the likes of David Attenborough examining the causes and effects of the climate emergency whet many people's appetites for understanding more from credible sources. Sir David's own learning journey in coming to understand the urgency of the situation underscores the rich learning opportunities available to us all, particularly in the run up to COP26 in Glasgow."

He added: "Ensuring any form of environmental education is relevant, coherent, fit for purpose, funded appropriately, and available to current and future generations within and beyond the curriculum will be crucial to addressing sound and pertinent warnings from scientists."

Professor Dillon said: "Global leaders should be discussing how to reimagine, recreate and restore environmental education to reduce the consequences of the environmental crisis. Countries should embed environmental and science education throughout society in ways that make sense locally."

Professor Ardoin said: "Only by investing in education -- and especially environmental and sustainability education -- will it be possible to radically alter the course we are currently on, and thus demonstrate to ourselves and future generations that sufficient heed was given to our warnings."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210707112408.htm

Just enough information will motivate young children to learn, drive curiosity

Preschoolers need to know just enough, but not all, about something to motivate them to learn more

June 29, 2021

Science Daily/Rutgers University

Preschool children are sensitive to the gap between how much they know and how much there is to learn, according to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick study.

The research, published in the journal Psychological Science, found preschool children are more likely to choose to gather more information about something if they know just enough about it to find it interesting, but not too much that it becomes boring.

Researchers say this "optimal" amount of existing knowledge creates the perfect mix of uncertainty and curiosity in children and motivates them to learn more.

"There is an infinite amount of information in the real world," said lead author Jenny Wang, an assistant professor of cognitive psychology at Rutgers. "Yet despite having to learn so much in such a short amount of time, young children seem to learn happily and effectively. We wanted to understand what drives their curiosity."

The study focused on how children's knowledge level influences what information they find interesting. The findings suggest that children are not simply attracted to information by its novelty.

According to Wang, children are naturally curious but the difficult question is how to harness this natural curiosity.

"Ultimately, findings like this will help parents and educators better support children when they actively explore and learn about the world," Wang said.

In a series of experiments, Wang and her coauthors designed in-person and online storybooks to measure how much 3- to 5-year-old preschool children know about different "knowledge domains." The experiment also assessed their ability to understand and comprehend a specific topic, such as contagion, and asked how children's current knowledge level predicts their interest in learning more about it, including whether someone will get sick after playing with a sneezing friend.

"Intuitively, curiosity seems to belong to those who know the most, like scientists, and those who know the least, like babies," said Wang, who directs the Rutgers Cognition and Learning Center (CALC). "But what we found here is quite surprising: it was children in the middle who showed the most interest in learning more about contagion, compared to children who knew too little or too much."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210629120827.htm

Managing attention deficit disorder by training the brain

June 29, 2021

Science Daily/Université de Genève

Scientists explored a technique called 'neurofeedback,' which enables ADHD patients to train their attention, based on instant feedback from the level of their brain activity. The team of neuroscientists found that not only did the training have a positive effect on patients' concentration abilities, but also that the attention improvement was closely linked to an enhanced response from the brain -- the P3 wave -- which is known to reflect integration of information in the brain.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) affects about 7% of children, with a two out of three chance of persisting into adulthood. This neurodevelopmental disorder is characterised by concentration difficulties, increased distractibility, impulsivity and hyperactivity. Today, ADHD is treated with pharmaceutical drugs that may have unwanted side effects. This is why scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), Switzerland, explored a new technique called 'neurofeedback', which enables ADHD patients to train their attention, based on instant feedback from the level of their brain activity. The team of neuroscientists found that not only did the training have a positive effect on patients' concentration abilities, but also that the attention improvement was closely linked to an enhanced response from the brain- the P3 wave -- which is known to reflect integration of information in the brain, with higher P3 amplitudes indicating greater attention towards detected targets. The findings are open-access and have been published in the journal Clinical Neurophysiology.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) develops in childhood and leads to numerous difficulties with attention, concentration and impulsiveness. It has genetic associated with environmental causes, and is characterised by a deficit in dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in executive functions. "These disorders persist for the most part into adulthood and lead to problems in relational and socio-professional functioning, making it easier for people with this disorder to turn to alcohol or drugs," notes Marie-Pierre Deiber, a researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and at the HUG Division of Psychiatric Specialties.

Today, ADHD is treated with medications that increase the concentration of dopamine, which improves the patient's attention. As the disorder is often accompanied by depression, anxiety or even bipolar disorders, treatment is generally combined with psychotherapy. "However, pharmaceutical treatments can be accompanied by significant side effects, such as nervousness, sleep disturbance, but also an increased risk of developing other psychiatric disorders or cardiovascular diseases," explains Roland Hasler, a researcher in the HUG Division of Psychiatric Specialties. "This is why we wanted to investigate a completely non-pharmacological and non-invasive treatment based on the principle of 'neurofeedback'."

Sending the brain its own signals

Neurofeedback is a type of neurocognitive intervention based on the training of "real-time" brain signals. Using an electroencephalogram (EEG) with 64 sensors, the scientists capture the electrical activity of cortical neurons and focus their analysis on the spontaneous Alpha rhythm (with frequency around 10 Hertz), coupling its amplitude fluctuation to a video game that the patients can control with the power of their attention. "The aim of neurofeedback is to make the patients aware of the moments when they are no longer attentive. With practice, brain networks then "learn" to reduce attentional lapses through neuroplasticity," explains Tomas Ros, researcher in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and at the Centre for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM). To do this, the patient's EEG is connected to a computer that displays the image of a space shuttle. When the patient is in an attentive brain state (low Alpha rhythm), this makes the space shuttle move forward. But as soon as the patient is distracted or loses attention (high Alpha rhythm), this stops the space-shuttle movement instantly. Faced with the stopping of the space shuttle, the patient realizes that he/she was no longer paying attention and refocuses to restart the shuttle.

Training the brain to focus without medication?

To measure the effects of neurofeedback training, the Geneva team administered an attention test to 25 adults with ADHD, and 22 neurotypical adults. The results showed that, at baseline, ADHD patients made more mistakes and had a more variable reaction time than the control participants, in line with a signature of impaired attention. After 30 minutes of neurofeedback training, the participants took the attention test again.

"The first finding was that stimulus detection and response variability were improved, indicating attentional enhancement," says Marie-Pierre Deiber. "But what interested us most was the impact of the neurofeedback training on the P3 component, which has previously been shown to be reduced in ADHD, and directly linked to the neurocognitive processing of the stimulus." The higher the amplitude of the P3, the more efficient the processing of the stimulus is, and the more accurate the response to the attention task. "The amplitude of the P3 increased significantly after neurofeedback training, and was directly associated with a reduction in the number of errors made by the patients," reports Tomas Ros.

This study firstly shows that a single 30-minute session of neurofeedback can induce short-term plasticity in the brain and encourages attentional improvements in ADHD patients. Secondly, it supports the existence of an electro-physiological marker of attentional processing in ADHD. "Thus, the P3 could be a cerebral signature that would allow us to better understand the neurocognitive mechanisms of ADHD," continues Nader Perroud, professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and at the HUG Division of Psychiatric Specialties. Finally, as the effects are evident in the short term, the scientists plan to carry out a neurofeedback treatment based on multiple training sessions, in order to observe whether the brain's plasticity is strengthened over time. "The ultimate goal is to enable patients to learn to concentrate without medication and to be able to train their brain in the comfort of their home," concludes Tomas Ros.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210629120746.htm

How environmental factors could provide for a young brain

June 29, 2021

Science Daily/DZNE - German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases

A stimulating environment keeps the "hippocampus" -- which is the brain's memory control center -- young, so to speak. Causes of this are molecular mechanisms that affect gene regulation. These current findings from studies in mice provide clues as to why an active, varied life can help preserve mental fitness in old age. Researchers from the DZNE and the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) at the Technische Universität Dresden report on this in the journal Nature Communications.

Human DNA -- and this also applies to mice -- contains thousands of genes. However, it is not only the genetic blueprint that is decisive for the function of a cell and whether it is healthy or not, but above all which genes can be switched on or off. Aging, living conditions and behavior are known to influence this ability to activate genes. The phenomenon, referred to as "epigenetics," was the focus of the current study. For this, researchers including Dr. Sara Zocher and Prof. Gerd Kempermann examined mice that had grown up in different environments: One group of animals experienced, from a young age, an "enriched" environment with toys and tunnel tubes. The rodents of a second group did not have such occupational opportunities.

Attachments to the DNA

When the scientists examined the genome, they found that in those mice that grew up in the stimulating environment, there was, with age, only a relatively small change in certain chemical tags of the DNA. In mice from the low-stimulus environment, these changes were much more pronounced -- in comparison between young and older animals. "We registered so-called methyl groups, which stick to the DNA," explains Gerd Kempermann, speaker for the DZNE's Dresden site, DZNE research group leader and also a scientist at the CRTD. "These chemical attachments do not alter the genetic information per se. Rather, they influence whether individual genes can be activated or not."

Malleable Brains

Such "epigenetic markings" tend to diminish with age, but in the animals with stimulating living conditions, the decrease in methyl groups was comparatively small. Thus, in old mice raised in a varied environment, gene activity had, in a sense, remained young. In particular, this affected a series of genes relevant to growing new neurons and cellular connections in the hippocampus. "Epigenetically, these animals retained a younger hippocampus," Kempermann says. Therefore, the brains of these mice were more malleable -- experts speak of greater "neuroplasticity" -- than in conspecifics of the same age that had grown up in a low-stimulus environment.

The current study did not include behavioral experiments. However, Kempermann points out that many other studies have shown that mice raised in high-stimulus settings perform better on memory tests than those from low-stimulus environments. "It is fair to assume that this mental fitness is due to the stabilization of methylation patterns that we observed," the neuroscientist says. "Of course, the question is to what extent our findings also apply to humans. Here, the situation is likely to be more complicated. After all, it is about how living conditions influence behavior and the way humans react to external stimuli is much more complex than in mice. However, we have good reasons to believe that the basic epigenetic principles are the same in humans as in mice."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210629120733.htm

Evidence against physically punishing kids is clear

June 29, 2021

Science Daily/University of Texas at Austin

A conclusive narrative review has found physical punishment of children is not effective in preventing child behavior problems or promoting positive outcomes and instead predicts increases in behavior problems and other poor outcomes over time. The study by an international group of scientists including a researcher from The University of Texas at Austin was published today in The Lancet.

Caregivers in many parts of the world use physical punishment as a response to children's perceived misbehavior: 63% of children between the ages of 2 and 4 worldwide -- approximately 250 million children -- are regularly subjected to physical punishment by caregivers.

Sixty-two countries have banned the practice, which is increasingly seen as a form of violence.

The team looked at studies involving physical punishment such as spanking and excluded any behaviors that could constitute child physical abuse. The researchers found ample evidence to support a United Nations statement from the Committee on the Rights of the Child that recommended countries end the use of all types of physical punishment on children.

"There is no evidence that physical punishment is good for children," said Elizabeth Gershoff, the Amy Johnson McLaughlin Centennial Professor in Human Development and Family Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin and senior author of the paper. "All the evidence indicates that physical punishment is harmful to children's development and well-being."

The review looked at 69 studies, most of which were from the United States, with eight from other countries. Scientists found that physical punishment was not associated with any positive outcomes for children and increased the risk that children would experience severe violence or neglect. The paper points out that negative outcomes associated with physical punishment, such as behavior problems, occurred no matter the child's sex, race, or ethnicity and regardless of the overall parenting styles of the caregivers. The authors also found evidence that the magnitude of negative outcomes for children increased the more frequently physical punishment was used.

"Parents hit their children because they think doing so will improve their behavior," Gershoff said. "Unfortunately for parents who hit, our research found clear and compelling evidence that physical punishment does not improve children's behavior and instead makes it worse."

In the U.S., it is legal in all 50 states for parents to use physical punishment. It is also legal in 19 states for schools to use physical punishment against children. The paper was intended as a resource for policymakers and people who work with families, such as medical and mental health providers.

"This is a public health issue," said Anja Heilmann, lead author of the paper who is an associate professor at University College London. "Given the strength of the evidence that physical punishment has the potential to cause harm to children, policymakers have a responsibility to protect children and legislate to end the use of physical punishment in all settings."

Gershoff previously authored a landmark 2016 meta-analysis of dozens of studies and found that physical punishment was not associated with any positive outcomes for children and was heavily associated with a variety of negative outcomes. Gershoff's work was cited by former Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. in a 2016 federal letter urging states to consider ending the use of physical punishment in schools. Gershoff also helped to inform policy statements from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association that use research on the harmful effects of physical punishment as a basis for recommending that caregivers no longer use it.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210629101233.htm

The most curious babies become the most curious toddlers

Infants' responses to surprising events are linked to later cognitive ability

June 28, 2021

Science Daily/Johns Hopkins University

A first-of-its-kind longitudinal study of infant curiosity found that months-old babies most captivated by magic tricks became the most curious toddlers, suggesting a pre-verbal baby's level of interest in surprising aspects of the world remains constant over time and could predict their future cognitive ability.

"Something about a baby's curiosity about magic tricks is predicting how curious they become as preschoolers," said Lisa Feigenson, co-director of the Johns Hopkins University Laboratory for Child Development. "What the data suggest is that some three-year-olds have a leg up or seem particularly well positioned to learn a lot about the world."

The findings appear today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Until this study, little was known about curiosity in the pre-verbal mind, as curiosity has mainly been studied in much older children and adults.

The key question behind this work was sparked by Feigenson's own curiosity, and that of lead author Johns Hopkins graduate student Jasmin Perez, about a constant frustration with the classic experimental method for studying infant cognition. In those experiments, babies are shown regular objects and objects behaving in surprising, unexpected ways. Many but not all babies tend to look longer at the unexpected events. Some will stare and stare at a car that seems to float in midair or a ball that seems to pass through a solid wall. Other babies will take a glimpse, yawn and they're done.

Researchers assumed the variability was due to babies being babies -- maybe they were fussy or hungry or distracted. But Feigenson and Perez suspected something important was happening.

"We started to wonder if maybe all of that individual variability is actually meaningful, and tells us that babies are responding to the world differently, from baby to baby," Perez said.

To find out, they launched an experiment where they studied 65 babies over time. At 11 months old, some babies were shown a toy that behaved normally, while others saw the toy seemingly pass straight through a wall. Six months later, the babies, now a year and a half old, now saw either a new toy that behaved normally, or seemed to float in mid-air.

"We found babies who looked really long at magical objects at 11 months were the same babies that looked really long at magical objects at 17 months," Perez said. "Babies are affected by these magical events in different ways, and these ways appear to be stable across a six-month period during infancy."

There was also little change in the least interested babies over the six-month period.

But was this difference among babies predictive of future thinking? To determine that, the team originally wanted to bring the participants back to the lab after they turned three, but because of the pandemic, they instead sent their parents standardized curiosity questionnaires.

They found that the babies who looked longest at events that defied their expectations were the ones whose parents rated them as most curious in an information-seeking, problem-solving way -- the type of curiosity most likely to help children learn about the world.

Feigenson's lab previously found that these magical, expectation-defying events are learning opportunities for babies. The new findings, which show some kids are better at noticing these surprising events in the first place, raise the possibility that some kids are better positioned to learn, at least in this way that uses expectation violations as leverage to think more deeply about the world.

The team plans to follow-up with the cohort to see just how long lasting and broad the individual differences among the children become.

"One reason these results are exciting is they open the door to so many other important questions," Feigenson said. "What does it mean for the children in the future? Are these kids also rated as most curious in middle school? Are those kids going to score highest on school achievement tests or IQ tests? These results are screaming out for longitudinal follow-up."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210628152903.htm

Growing evidence of vitamin K benefits for heart health

August 9, 2021

Science Daily/Edith Cowan University

New Edith Cowan University (ECU) research has found that people who eat a diet rich in vitamin K have up to a 34 percent lower risk of atherosclerosis-related cardiovascular disease (conditions affecting the heart or blood vessels).

Researchers examined data from more than 50,000 people taking part in the Danish Diet, Cancer, and Health study over a 23-year period. They investigated whether people who ate more foods containing vitamin K had a lower risk of cardiovascular disease related to atherosclerosis (plaque build-up in the arteries).

There are two types of vitamin K found in foods we eat: vitamin K1 comes primarily from green leafy vegetables and vegetable oils while vitamin K2 is found in meat, eggs and fermented foods such as cheese.

The study found that people with the highest intakes of vitamin K1 were 21 percent less likely to be hospitalised with cardiovascular disease related to atherosclerosis.

For vitamin K2, the risk of being hospitalised was 14 percent lower.

This lower risk was seen for all types of heart disease related to atherosclerosis, particularly for peripheral artery disease at 34 percent.

ECU researcher and senior author on the study Dr Nicola Bondonno said the findings suggest that consuming more vitamin K may be important for protection against atherosclerosis and subsequent cardiovascular disease.

"Current dietary guidelines for the consumption of vitamin K are generally only based on the amount of vitamin K1 a person should consume to ensure that their blood can coagulate," she said.

"However, there is growing evidence that intakes of vitamin K above the current guidelines can afford further protection against the development of other diseases, such as atherosclerosis.

"Although more research is needed to fully understand the process, we believe that vitamin K works by protecting against the calcium build-up in the major arteries of the body leading to vascular calcification."

University of Western Australia researcher Dr Jamie Bellinge, the first author on the study, said the role of vitamin K in cardiovascular health and particularly in vascular calcification is an area of research offering promising hope for the future.

"Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death in Australia and there's still a limited understanding of the importance of different vitamins found in food and their effect on heart attacks, strokes and peripheral artery disease," Dr Bellinge said.

"These findings shed light on the potentially important effect that vitamin K has on the killer disease and reinforces the importance of a healthy diet in preventing it."

Next steps in the research

Dr Bondonno said that while databases on the vitamin K1 content of foods are very comprehensive, there is currently much less data on the vitamin K2 content of foods. Furthermore, there are 10 forms of vitamin K2 found in our diet and each of these may be absorbed and act differently within our bodies.

"The next phase of the research will involve developing and improving databases on the vitamin K2 content of foods.

"More research into the different dietary sources and effects of different types of vitamin K2 is a priority," Dr Bondonno said.

Additionally, there is a need for an Australian database on the vitamin K content of Australian foods (e.g. vegemite and kangaroo).

To address this need, Dr Marc Sim, a collaborator on the study, has just finished developing an Australian database on the vitamin K content of foods which will be published soon.

The paper 'Vitamin K intake and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in the Danish Diet Cancer and Health Study' was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The research is part of ECU's Institute of Nutrition Research.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210809144115.htm

Tracking circadian rhythms from your smartwatch

August 3, 2021

Science Daily/University of Michigan

Smartwatches are handy devices for people to keep track of the number of steps they take per day or to track their mile time during a run. But they are also opportunities for scientists to understand people's physiological processes while they are going about their everyday lives.

In particular, scientists have been interested in tracking people's circadian rhythms through the biological data gathered by their smartwatches -- specifically, their heart rate. Doing so would allow individuals to know the best times of day to sleep, eat, exercise or take their medications.

At night, a person's heart rate lowers in order to conserve energy. During a person's waking period, their heart rate speeds up in anticipation of activity. But the challenge has been figuring out a way to find the throughline of a person's heart rate among all of the ways it varies throughout the day, says Daniel Forger, a professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan.

Now, Forger and his colleagues have developed a statistical method that accounts for all of the "noise" that might affect a person's heart rate and extracts a person's circadian rhythm based on heart rate data provided by their smart watch.

The circadian rhythm is an internal clock that synchronizes all of the physiological functions in the body. The master clock, located in the brain's hypothalamus, oversees all of the millions of other internal clocks in your body: Each cell has an internal clock, as does your heart, the liver and the brain. In healthy individuals, these clocks are all in synchrony. But studying this master clock is difficult -- especially outside of a lab setting.

"I think a big question has been, can we measure circadian rhythms with wearables, and how can we do that?" said Forger, also a research professor of computational medicine and bioinformatics at Michigan Medicine. "Heart rate itself has a circadian rhythm, but it's complicated by a lot of different things: You lie down and go to sleep, and your heart rate drops. You go running and your heart rate goes way up.

"The hard question was, how do we pull out that internal timekeeping signal to know what time of day your body thinks it is from all of those other signals out there?"

The group's algorithm works by discarding data collected during sleep and focusing on data collected during a person's waking period. Then, the algorithm, developed by study co-author and former U-M postdoctoral researcher Clark Bowman, takes into account whether a person's heart rate is affected by the person's activity or cortisol because of exercise, posture or meals. The result is the underlying daily timekeeping signal controlling heart rate.

To test whether this statistical method worked, the group used a dataset from an ongoing study of medical interns, called the Intern Health Study. The study provides more than 130,000 days of data from 900 interns who continuously wore wrist-based sleep-tracking devices collecting motion and heart rate data. Medical interns are good subjects to use in this kind of research because they are shift workers, which means sometimes their work shifts change from day to night from week to week.

"Smart watches collect heart rate data using optical sensors, which aren't very accurate, and there are so many things affecting heart rate throughout the day that measurements tend to be all over the place, so it's a big result to be able to identify a circadian rhythm in that kind of data at all," said Bowman, now a professor of mathematics and statistics at Hamilton College.

"It's only possible since smart watches take measurements so frequently and provide information about activity to help account for cardiac demand. The sheer amount of data is just enough to see the background trend of heart rate subtly rising and falling in time with a circadian clock."

In one example in the study, a person's sleeping and waking patterns, as demonstrated by their heart rate, adjust quickly to their changing work schedule. This means their circadian rhythm was able to quickly adjust to a bedtime and waking time that was almost opposite of what they had previously been experiencing.

Another individual's data, however, showed a different story. Their circadian rhythm lagged behind their adjusted sleep schedule, which likely means they were feeling pretty sluggish during the time they were adjusting to their new waking schedule.

This sluggishness is the same effect that those with jet lag experience. Jet lag can occur when a person's heart rate isn't in sync with their waking period. A slower heart rate can make a person feel sleepy or sluggish.

Forger says the strength of using data from wearables means scientists, as well as the person wearing the watch, can study a person's circadian rhythm based on real-world influences, which has certain advantages over measuring circadian rhythm in a lab. The gold standard clinical study to study circadian rhythm would be to measure a person's melatonin levels over a period of six to 40 hours in a dark lab.

"We've shown that you can take a wearable signal and directly measure circadian rhythms in the real world, and the real world has so many things that affect circadian rhythms that you aren't going to measure in the lab," Forger said, explaining that some of the data the team has had to account for are extended periods of intense activity (a semiprofessional cyclist, for example). The method also does not account for effects on heart rate such as caffeine, psychological stress, pharmaceuticals and disease.

"There are some scenarios that you have to always be a little more careful with, using real world data," he said. "But again we're going to pick up other things you may not experience in a lab."

The researchers also developed the Social Rhythms app, available for iPhone and Android devices, where you can upload your wearable data and receive a report on how your internal circadian clock has changed recently.

"Measuring that signal not only provides information about the body's circadian timing, but also characterizes how each individual's heart rate behaves," Bowman said. "We can use this information to track how the body adjusts to new schedules, study how physical activity affects each individual's heart rate slightly differently, and even quantify the effect of being active at different times of day on the body's internal clock.

"Smart watch users could have real-time information on their circadian clock to help adjust to jet lag or shift work, manage circadian disorders or identify abnormalities in heart rate which might present health risks."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210803121327.htm

Excess coffee: A bitter brew for brain health

July 22, 2021

Science Daily/University of South Australi

It's a favourite first-order for the day, but while a quick coffee may perk us up, new research from the University of South Australia shows that too much could be dragging us down, especially when it comes to brain health.

In the largest study of its kind, researchers have found that high coffee consumption is associated with smaller total brain volumes and an increased risk of dementia.

Conducted at UniSA's Australian Centre for Precision Health at SAHMRI and a team of international researchers*, the study assessed the effects of coffee on the brain among 17,702 UK Biobank participants (aged 37-73), finding that those who drank more than six cups of coffee a day had a 53 per cent increased risk of dementia.

Lead researcher and UniSA PhD candidate, Kitty Pham, says the research delivers important insights for public health.

"Coffee is among the most popular drinks in the world. Yet with global consumption being more than nine billion kilograms a year, it's critical that we understand any potential health implications," Pham says.

"This is the most extensive investigation into the connections between coffee, brain volume measurements, the risks of dementia, and the risks of stroke -- it's also the largest study to consider volumetric brain imaging data and a wide range of confounding factors.

"Accounting for all possible permutations, we consistently found that higher coffee consumption was significantly associated with reduced brain volume -- essentially, drinking more than six cups of coffee a day may be putting you at risk of brain diseases such as dementia and stroke."

Dementia is a degenerative brain condition that affects memory, thinking, behaviour and the ability to perform everyday tasks. About 50 million people are diagnosed with the syndrome worldwide. In Australia, dementia is the second leading cause of death, with an estimated 250 people diagnosed each day.

Stroke is a condition where the blood supply to the brain is disrupted, resulting in oxygen starvation, brain damage and loss of function. Globally, one in four adults over the age of 25 will have a stroke in their lifetime. Data suggests that 13.7 million people will have a stroke this year with 5.5 million dying as a result.

Senior investigator and Director of UniSA's Australian Centre for Precision Health, Professor Elina Hyppönen, says while the news may be a bitter brew for coffee lovers, it's all about finding a balance between what you drink and what's good for your health.

"This research provides vital insights about heavy coffee consumption and brain health, but as with many things in life, moderation is the key," Prof Hyppönen says.

"Together with other genetic evidence and a randomised controlled trial, these data strongly suggest that high coffee consumption can adversely affect brain health. While the exact mechanisms are not known, one simple thing we can do is to keep hydrated and remember to drink a bit of water alongside that cup of coffee.

"Typical daily coffee consumption is somewhere between one and two standard cups of coffee. Of course, while unit measures can vary, a couple of cups of coffee a day is generally fine.

"However, if you're finding that your coffee consumption is heading up toward more than six cups a day, it's about time you rethink your next drink."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210722120624.htm