Free Republic

Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is associated with a greater capacity for selective and sustained attention in adolescents, while alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) is associated with lower impulsivity, according to a study. The results confirm the importance of having a diet that provides sufficient amounts of these polyunsaturated fatty acids for a healthy brain development. During adolescence, important structural and functional changes occur in the brain, especially in the prefrontal area, which plays a major role in controlling attention. On the other hand, omega-3 unsaturated fatty acids are known to be critical for proper brain development and function. The most abundant fatty acid...

Exposures of pregnant women and children to common thyroid-hormone-disrupting toxins may be linked to the increased incidence of brain development disorders, according to a review published in Endocrine Connections. The review describes how numerous, common chemicals can interfere with normal thyroid hormone actions, which are essential for normal brain development in foetuses and young children, and suggests a need for greater public health intervention. We have reviewed the documented exposures of pregnant women and children to mixtures of thyroid-hormone-disrupting chemicals and propose that the data sets provide a plausible link to the recent increased incidence of neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism...

Changing Brains Mean that Adolescents Act Differently From Adults Pictures of the brain in action show that adolescents' brains work differently than adults when they make decisions or solve problems. Their actions are guided more by the emotional and reactive amygdala and less by the thoughtful, logical frontal cortex. Research has also shown that exposure to drugs and alcohol during the teen years can change or delay these developments.Based on the stage of their brain development, adolescents are more likely to: * Act on impulse * Misread or misinterpret social cues and emotions * Get into accidents of all kinds...

As scanning becomes more sophisticated researchers are finding that there is actually a difference in the way development takes place in the brains of men and women starting in the teenage years.

In North Korea, young Kim Jong Eun will test age-old reliance on maturity By Marc Fisher, Published: December 23 At 28 or 29, Kim Jong Eun, the presumed new leader of North Korea, will be the youngest person ever to have authority over a nuclear arsenal. At that age, neuroscientists say, the brain is still in the final stages of development. Developmental psychologists say thereÂ’s a good reason that AmericaÂ’s Founding Fathers set 35 as the minimum age for a president: People younger than that just donÂ’t have the experience or skill to deal with complex decision making. Historians warn...

Call it the pubescent pot problem. New research shows that adults who smoked marijuana before age 15 have significant problems with attention span, impulse control, and "executive function" - the ability to plan and carry out tasks. How about people who took up toking later in life? The same research showed they were much less likely to have such difficulties. For the research, scientists at the Federal University of Sao Paulo in Brazil used a stardard "card sorting" task to evaluate the cognitive ability of 104 long-term cannabis users, including 49 who had started using before age 15. On average,...

ADHD Breakthrough by: Amanda Busse, January 09, 2008 A new study suggests that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children may be a matter of maturity. According to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ADHD in children is caused when portions of the brain mature at a slower pace than normal. For many, the condition eventually normalizes and nearly 80 percent of children grow out of the disorder, the researchers found. Researchers used a new image-analysis technique to measure the thickening and thinning of thousands of cortex sites in 223 children with ADHD and...

http://www.rettsyndrome.org/ My daughter Gabriella was diagnosed with Rett syndrome today. The two links explain what it is technically better than I can. The symptoms are regressive. They begin rapidly regressing at age 2 my daughter is 20 months. After regression their is little to no motor skills and communication along with severe retardation. This all seems to be caused by lack of a protein called mecp2. They are beginning to experiment on mice. Knowing the FDA that means many years till treatment comes out. Can anyone answer these questions. Is it true that protein we eat is broken down into...

When researchers studied the brains of Romanian orphans - children who had been left to cry in their cots from birth and denied any chance of forming close bonds with an adult - they found a "virtual black hole" where the orbitofrontal cortex should have been. This is the part of the brain that enables us to manage our emotions, to relate sensitively to other people, to experience pleasure and to appreciate beauty. These children's earliest experiences had greatly diminished their capacity ever to be fully human. Sue Gerhardt's book Why Love Matters shows that early experience has effects on...

Girls, Boys and Autism By Geoffrey Cowley, Newsweek Andrew Bacalao has a good, sharp mind. At 13, he's a decent pianist, a devotee of Frank Lloyd Wright, a master at videogames and jigsaw puzzles. He remembers phone numbers like a Pocket PC, and he can dismantle a radio or a flashlight in the time it takes some people to find the power switch.

A burst of brain activity recorded by scientists could offer clues to a baby's level of understanding of the world around it. The researchers involved, from Birkbeck College, and University College London, believe their finding could begin to settle a controversial argument on baby brain development. When an object is shown to six-month-old babies, then hidden, they often behave as if it is no longer present. It appears to be "out of sight, out of mind", as far as their level of understanding is concerned. But scientists still suspect the baby, to some extent, does understand the object is still...

Autism appears to be caused by a reduction in the brain at birth and then extremely rapid development in the first few months of life, researchers in San Diego, California said. "What we've discovered is really very startling - the first glimpse of when autism begins," said Eric Courchesne, director of the autism research center at the Pediatric Hospital of San Diego. "Excessive brain growth does not allow time for accumulation of experiences and emotions that guide and shape normal behavior." Autism is a developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life, resulting from a neurological...