Birth Weight May Impact Brain Development

Even after controlling for age, gender, household income, and genetic ancestry, children with higher birth weights were found to have a greater brain surface in numerous regions and a greater brain volume than children who had weighed less at birth. Kristine Beate Walhovd, Ph.D., of the University of Oslo in Norway and her colleagues reported these findings today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition. The study included 628 healthy American children.

This is one of several notable brain-development studies whose results have been reported recently. Preliminary imaging findings suggested, for example, that a distinct and pervasive course of white-matter development characterizes high-risk infants who then eventually develop autism symptoms. Read about that study in Psychiatric News. And in another study rat pups perinatally exposed to the SSRI antidepressant citalopram exhibited impaired social behavior and impaired response to novelty situations. See Psychiatric News to read more about that study as well.

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