Baby brain growth mirrors changes from apes to humans

Areas of expansion in the human cortex during infancy and childhood, top, closely match areas of change in the human brain when compared with the brains of apes and monkeys. Yellow areas expanded the most, followed by orange, red, blue and light blue areas.

A study undertaken to help scientists concerned with abnormal brain development in premature babies has serendipitously revealed evolution’s imprint on the human brain.


Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that the human brain regions that grow the most during infancy and childhood are nearly identical to the brain regions with the most changes when human brains are compared with those of apes and monkeys.

Researchers report the finding in a detailed comparison of the brains of normal-term infants and healthy young adults published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists conducted the study to help assess the long-term effects of premature birth on brain development. These can include increased risks of learning disabilities, attention deficits, behavioral problems and cognitive impairments.

"Pre-term births have been rising in recent years, and now 12 percent of all babies in the United States are born prematurely," says Terrie Inder, MD, PhD, professor of pediatrics. "Until now, though, we were very limited in our ability to study how premature birth affects brain development because we had so little data on what normal brain development looks like."


Among the questions Inder and her colleagues hope to answer is the extent to which the brain can adapt to developmental limitations or setbacks imposed by early birth. They also are helping to develop clinical strategies to promote such adaptations and normalize development.


The study used a technique for comparative brain anatomy called surface reconstruction pioneered by senior author David Van Essen, PhD, Edison Professor and head of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology. Surface reconstruction helps scientists more closely align comparable regions and structures in many different brains and has been used to create online atlases of brain structure.


First author Jason Hill, an MD/PhD student, analyzed the brain scans of 12 full-term infants and compared these with scans from 12 healthy young adults. Data from the two groups were combined into a single atlas to help scientists quantify the differences between the infant and young-adult brains.





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Friendly viruses in the intestine are unique – even among identical twins

Many people associate viruses with disease. But a largely unexplored world of viruses make their home in the lower intestine, and new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that each of us harbors a unique collection of these “friendly” viruses.
In a study of healthy identical twins – all females – and their mothers, the researchers found that even identical twins carry distinctive collections of viruses deep in their intestines. The research is published July 15 in the journal Nature.
Unlike viruses that make us sick, these viruses are not predators. Indeed, most of them are novel and live a cozy existence inside bacteria that naturally reside in the gut. Here, the viruses are thought to influence the activities of gut microbes, which among their other benefits allow us to digest certain components of our diets, such as plant-based carbohydrates, that we can’t on our own. Further, the viruses may act as a barometer to gauge the overall health of the gut microbial community as it responds to challenges or recovers after an illness or therapeutic intervention.

“Viruses are the major predators on planet Earth,” says senior author Jeffrey Gordon, MD, director of Washington University’s Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology, whose pioneering research has provided an understanding of the nature of the microbes that live in our intestines: how they are acquired and how they benefit us, including their influence on nutrition.

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