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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Little Rock, Arkansas » Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center » Microbiome and Metabolism Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #417330
Research Project: Impact of Maternal Influence and Early Dietary Factors on Child Growth, Development, and Metabolic Health

Location: Microbiome and Metabolism Research

Title: A Systematic Review over the Effect of Early Infant Diet on Neurodevelopment: Insights from Neuroimaging

Author
item GILBREATH, DYLAN - University Arkansas For Medical Sciences (UAMS)
item HAGOOD, DARCY - Arkansas Children'S Nutrition Research Center (ACNC)
item LARSON-PRIOR, LINDA - University Arkansas For Medical Sciences (UAMS)

Submitted to: Frontiers in Nutrition
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/23/2024
Publication Date: 5/30/2024
Citation: Gilbreath, D., Hagoog, D., Larson-Prior, L. 2024. A Systematic Review over the Effect of Early Infant Diet on Neurodevelopment: Insights from Neuroimaging. Frontiers in Nutrition. 16(11):1703. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16111703.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/nu16111703

Interpretive Summary: The influence of early diet on the developing human brain has yet to be fully determined although many researchers believe that it plays a major role in laying the structure on which brain function will rely. Imaging the brain's structure and function is currently the only way to study development in living, growing children but using these methods in infants to study the effects of diet has not been done in many studies. In those that have used imaging to study development, the link to diet has been later in life after solid foods have been introduced. This systematic review provides a thorough examination of the influence of different feeding choices in human infant's brain development as defined by brain imaging.

Technical Abstract: The structural and functional development of the human brain has yet to be fully elucidated,and the effect of infant diet on neuronal development is becoming an increasingly studied area. Seminal research on developmental neuropathology suggests that environmental influences—including nutrition—have the greatest impact on the development of the brain’s structure [1], one that endures in subsequent development of various neuronal processes. In this way, infant diet has a persistent effect on the structure of the brain. While many studies retrospectively link early infant diet to developmental outcomes in older children and adolescents, relatively few studies have been conducted on the impact of diet on the structure and function of the infant brain during its development. The purpose of this review is to thoroughly examine the influence of human milk or various formula infant diets on neurodevelopment measured quantitatively through euroimaging. While the majority of studies conducted using MRI strongly suggest that human milk is optimal for the neurodevelopment and maturation of both term and preterm infants, more research is needed to support this claim. There remains a substantial gap in understanding how early infant diet effects the brain’s functional development, and more studies using functional modalities such as EEG, MEG, and fMRI in more diverse populations are needed to better address this gap in the literature. Overall, human milk-fed infants tend to have stronger markers of neuromaturation than their formula-fed counterparts; however, this effect is somewhat mitigated by supplementation of formula with fatty acids and other macronutrients in formula-fed infants. These differences in term infants are more subtle than in preterm infants which may be due to the greater nutritional needs of preterm infants.