How to give birth to a smart child?

Scientists: the conditions of a child's development in the womb determine his mental development for life

Yaroslav Agafonnikov, RIA AMI

The position of the fetus in the womb and the mother's diet during pregnancy can have an impact on a person's mental activity throughout his life. The intrauterine environment affects the development of the cerebral cortex, which carries many functions, in particular, the management of emotions and the learning process. This conclusion was reached by researchers at Concordia University in Canada, having studied pairs of genetically identical twins from birth to adolescence (see the press release In utero conditions can affect a teen's brain development – VM).

As is known, the development of identical twins with a common genetic material depends on many environmental factors, such as the length of stay in the womb and the lifestyle of the mother. In addition, in some cases, each of the twins is in its own amniotic sac, which leads to some differences in the development of children, in particular, to different newborn weights.

In their study, the scientists found that genetically identical twins born with different weights had differences in the structure of the cerebral cortex, and this relationship can not be explained by hereditary differences in newborns.

The researchers tracked 52 pairs of twins born with different weights, up to adolescence, periodically conducting scans of the cerebral cortex. As a result, it was found that the differences in the cortical structure of such twins not only did not disappear, but also intensified. This allowed us to conclude that the processes taking place in the womb affect all further human development. So a young mother needs to monitor her diet and daily routine as carefully as possible, since, as it turned out, it depends not only on how the baby lives before birth, but also how she will live her whole life in the future.

Article by Casey et al. Birth weight discordance, DNA methylation, and cortical morphology of adolescent monozygotic twins is published in the journal Human Brain Mapping – VM.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  30.01.2017