Producing Smarter Babies

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Research has shown that children who were breast fed as infants have cognitive skills that are superior to those fed infant formula. Researchers have thought this is due to an essential fatty acid in breast milk called docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). A new study has confirmed that babies fed formula supplemented with DHA have higher cognitive skills than babies fed regular formula.

Researchers at the Retina Foundation of the Southwest and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center carried out the study, which used a more sensitive test of the babies' cognitive abilities and higher concentrations of DHA than previous research.

The researchers studied 229 infants who received either formula supplemented with DHA or traditional infant formula. The babies were given the different formulas either shortly after birth, after six weeks of breastfeeding, or after four to six months of breastfeeding. When they were nine months old, they were given a test in which they had to complete a sequence of steps to get a rattle. Babies who were fed formula supplemented with DHA showed more intentional behaviors and were more likely to get the rattle.

"Currently, there is no clear consensus on whether infant formula should be supplemented with DHA," lead author James R. Drover, formerly of the Retina Foundation of the Southwest, now assistant professor of psychology at Memorial University in Canada, was quoted as saying. "However, our results clearly suggest that feeding infants formula supplemented with high concentrations of DHA provides beneficial effects on cognitive development. Furthermore, because infants who display superior performance on the means-end problem-solving task tend to have superior IQ and vocabulary later in childhood, it's possible that the beneficial effects of DHA extend well beyond infancy."

SOURCE: Child Development, September/October 2009

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