Intelligence
Episodes
Dr. Rhonda Patrick discusses concerns about early smartphone and tablet access among kids and its effects on mental health later in life.
Milk Fat Globule Membranes (MFGMs) in breast milk affect development of gut, brain, and intelligence
In this clip, Dr. Rhonda Patrick describes the structure and function of milk fat globule membranes in breast milk.
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Dr. Rhonda Patrick discusses concerns about early smartphone and tablet access among kids and its effects on mental health later in life.
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Milk Fat Globule Membranes (MFGMs) in breast milk affect development of gut, brain, and intelligence ClipIn this clip, Dr. Rhonda Patrick describes the structure and function of milk fat globule membranes in breast milk.
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Dr. Dale Bredesen discusses the potential brain-health benefits associated with a ketogenic diet.
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Learning events are "replayed" at rapid speed during deep sleep to reinforce learning | Matt Walker ClipDr. Matthew Walker describes how studies in rats and humans demonstrate that the brain "replays" events and experiences to facilitate learning.
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Dr. Matthew Walker describes how sound and smell cues played during learning and subsequent sleep can enhance memory formation and retrieval.
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Dr. Matthew Walker describes how napping facilitates and reinforces learning in infants.
Topic Pages
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Breast milk and breastfeeding
Breast milk supplies essential long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids and bioactive factors plausibly supporting neurodevelopment, modestly correlating with later IQ.
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Omega-3 fatty acids
Docosahexaenoic acid, an omega-3 fatty acid, incorporates into neuronal membranes, improving fluidity, synaptic plasticity, and neurotransmission essential for intelligence.
News & Publications
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Openness – a sense of curiosity, open-mindedness, and interest in new experiences – is critical to preserving cognitive function as we age. A new study has found that a tiny region in the brain called the locus coeruleus may provide the link between openness and better cognitive health. People with greater locus coeruleus integrity demonstrated more openness and – interestingly – had higher intelligence.
Researchers gave 135 young adults a battery of tests to gauge their openness and intelligence. Then, using an imaging technique called voxel-based morphometry, they measured the participants' locus coeruleus volumes.
They found that the participants with greater locus coeruleus volumes tended to have more openness and higher intelligence, regardless of age, gender, or total brain volume. Because locus coeruleus volume is associated with cognitive function, these findings suggest that activities that maintain locus coeruleus volume may be beneficial for preserving cognitive function.
The locus coeruleus is the primary region of the brain responsible for norepinephrine production. It is located in the pons and participates in the body’s response to stress, attention, emotion, motivation, decision-making, learning, and memory. Poor sleep has profound effects on locus coeruleus integrity and cognitive function. Learn more about the brain effects of poor sleep in this episode featuring Dr. Matt Walker.
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Children who were breastfed for 12 months or longer scored higher on standardized intelligence tests – even in their teens, according to a new study. These findings held true even after considering other factors that might influence intelligence.
Researchers asked the mothers of more than 7,800 children living in the United Kingdom how long they breastfed their children. They collected information about each mother’s socioeconomic status and cognitive abilities and administered standardized intelligence tests to the children at the ages of 5, 7, 11, and 14 years.
They found that across the board, longer-duration breastfeeding – 12 months or more – improved children’s performance on intelligence tests at all ages, even up to the age of 14 years. After considering factors that might influence the children’s cognitive performance, such as the mother’s socioeconomic status or intelligence, the researchers found that compared to non-breastfed children, children who were breastfed for longer periods performed modestly higher on intelligence tests from early childhood into their teen years.
Breastfeeding is the biologically superior way to feed an infant. Evidence suggests that breastfeeding has profound effects on the developing infant’s brain, promoting increases in white matter volume, especially in parts of the brain associated with language, emotional regulation, and cognition.
This study’s findings suggest that breastfeeding for longer duration influences an infant’s cognitive performance later in life. Learn more about the benefits of breastfeeding in our overview article.
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Ketogenic diet and β-Hydroxybutyrate may improve disorders of epigenetic machinery via HDAC inhibition, reducing intellectual disability www.sciencedaily.com
Ketogenic diet and beta-hydroxybutyrate improve gene transcription and reduce intellectual disability in Kabuki syndrome.
Kabuki syndrome is a debilitating inherited disorder caused by mutations in two genes involved in the regulation of chromatin remodeling, one of the first steps in DNA transcription. Ketones such as beta-hydroxybutyrate have been shown to enhance DNA transcription and gene expression. Findings from one group of researchers show that a ketogenic diet can alleviate some of the neurological deficits of Kabuki syndrome and improve memory.
Kabuki syndrome is named for the facial features common to people with the disorder, which looked similar to Kabuki theatre makeup to the Japanese scientists who first researched the disease. In addition to distinctive facial features, the syndrome causes a wide range of health problems such as heart defects, difficulty eating, weak muscle tone, immune deficiency, and intellectual disability. This wide range of severe health issues is explained by the fundamental importance of chromatin remodeling to the body’s functioning, which is impaired in those with Kabuki syndrome.
Chromatin is the name for the coiled structure DNA forms within the cells of plants and animals, which looks a bit like a tangled telephone cord. This coiled structure prevents DNA from being opened and transcribed (the first step in gene expression and DNA replication) randomly. Chromatin is wrapped around histone proteins that open or close the chromatin, based on whether the histone has a chemical tag called an acetyl group attached or not. As DNA accumulates epigenetic changes over the lifespan, histones become resistant to acetylation, chromatin is harder to open, and gene expression slows. Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors, such as the ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), are compounds that help release histones, open chromatin, prevent loss of gene expression with aging, and may even lengthen lifespan.
The researchers used a strain of mice that have the same DNA mutations that cause Kabuki syndrome in humans and fed them either a normal diet or a ketogenic diet for two weeks. The researchers fed a third group of mice a normal diet and gave them three daily injections of BHB for two weeks. To assess memory and cognitive performance, mice completed a water maze, a sensitive measure of hippocampal function, which is closely related to memory. The researchers measured changes in gene expression, HDAC activity, and neurogenesis.
Compared to a normal chow diet, a ketogenic diet increased the concentration of serum BHB, normalized acetylated histone levels, and increased the expression of several genes that are downregulated in Kabuki syndrome. These changes in gene expression enhanced multiple markers of neurogenesis and improved performance during the water maze test. Mice eating a normal diet that received daily BHB injections achieved similar serum BHB levels as mice eating a ketogenic diet and experienced the same gains in neurogenesis.
This comprehensive study provides insight into the potential of ketogenic diets and supplemental BHB to improve deficits in gene expression in mice with a debilitating genetic disorder. Future research is needed in order to translate these insights into clinically useful information for humans.
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Exercise improved cognitive function in overweight children. www.sciencedaily.com
Exercise benefits many aspects of cognitive function. Evidence suggests that children who engage in physical activity typically perform better in school. Findings from a 2011 study showed that exercise improved cognitive function in overweight children.
The intervention study involved 171 sedentary, overweight children between the ages of 7 and 11 years old. The authors of the study enrolled the children into one of three programs: a “low dose” 20-minute exercise program, a “high-dose” 40-minute exercise program, or a control (sedentary) program. The exercise programs were provided on school days only, for approximately three months. None of the children received any additional tutoring beyond their normal lessons. At the end of the intervention, the children took standardized cognition and achievement tests. Twenty of the children underwent functional MRI (fMRI) testing.
The results of the standardized tests demonstrated that exercise improved the children’s cognitive function in a dose-dependent manner. Intelligence scores increased among the children in the exercising groups, especially among those in the high dose (40-minute) group, whose scores increased approximately 3.8 points. No improvements were observed among those in the control group.
Analysis of the fMRIs revealed that the exercising children exhibited higher levels of activity in their prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with complex thinking, decision making, and social behavior – indicators of improved cognitive skills.
These findings suggest that exercise can benefit children’s cognitive performance and underscore the importance of physical activity programs in schools.
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Alcohol and cigarettes may accelerate brain aging. www.inverse.com
How well (and how quickly) we age depends on a confluence of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors. Some lifestyle behaviors, such as alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking, elicit harmful effects on multiple body systems that can accumulate over time to modulate aging. A new study demonstrates that alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking accelerate brain aging, in particular.
Research indicates that smoking cigarettes alters multiple structural aspects of the brain. For example, smokers tend to have less gray matter density and volume in the frontal, occipital, and temporal lobes – areas related to a wide range of brain function. Similarly, heavy alcohol use is associated with reduced gray and white matter volumes in the medial-prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices.
The authors of the study assessed relative brain age, a comparative measure of brain aging between people of the same chronological age, to determine if a person’s brain is aging at a different rate relative to their peers. The study was based on analysis of brain-imaging data collected from more than 17,000 UK Biobank participants who were of European ancestry and were cognitively normal. After determining the participants' relative brain age, they studied the association of relative brain age with cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and genetic variants.
They found that regular (daily or nearly daily) cigarette smoking or alcohol consumption increased relative brain aging. Every gram of alcohol (~20 grams in 1 fluid ounce) consumed per day was linked to one week of accelerated brain aging and each year spent smoking one pack of cigarettes per day was linked to 11 days of accelerated brain aging.
These increases in brain aging were associated with poor cognitive function and declines in fluid intelligence, the ability to creatively solve problems without prior knowledge or learning. They also identified two single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with accelerated brain aging.
While it is important to note that the effect of alcohol on brain aging was only seen in daily or almost daily drinkers, these findings provide useful insights into how cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption influence brain aging and highlight the need for future research to fully elucidate the factors associated with how the brain ages.
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Boys whose mothers were overweight or obese during pregnancy scored 5 or more points lower on IQ tests at age 7. www.sciencedaily.com
Many factors influence a child’s growth and development, including parenting styles, environmental exposures, socioeconomic status, and maternal health. Maternal obesity, in particular, drives inflammatory, hormonal, and metabolic dysfunction that may adversely affect a developing fetus. Findings from a new study indicate that boys born to obese women perform poorly in measures of motor skills and intelligence compared to children born to healthy weight women.
The study involved 368 children born to low-income African American or Dominican women living in the United States. The children underwent motor skill and intelligence testing at the ages of 3 and 7 years, respectively. The women were weighed before and during their pregnancies.
Boys born to women who were overweight or obese during pregnancy scored poorly on motor skills tests at age 3. Similarly, boys whose mothers were overweight or obese during pregnancy scored 5 or more points lower on intelligence tests, compared to boys whose mothers were a healthy weight. Girls did not exhibit differences in motor skills or intelligence. Interestingly, a nurturing home environment modulated some, but not all, of the negative effects of maternal obesity on development.
Although this was a prospective study and causation cannot be established, these findings point to the importance of maternal nutritional status before and during pregnancy. Unfortunately, this study did not control for important confounders such as diet during pregnancy or whether mothers breastfed their sons. Breastfeeding has been linked to intelligence in children.
It is noteworthy that the negative effects of maternal obesity were only found in boys and not girls. Other studies have shown that exposure to lead or fluoride in-utero has a negative effect on intelligence in boys. It seems as though boys are particularly vulnerable during fetal development.
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More abdominal fat drives loss of fluid intelligence whereas more muscle mass protects against loss. www.sciencedaily.com
Fluid intelligence – the ability to creatively solve problems without prior knowledge or learning – declines with age, often as early as the third decade of life. Evidence from a new study suggests that body composition influences declines in fluid intelligence, and these declines may be related to immune system activation.
Body composition describes an individual’s body fat and lean mass. Excess body fat promotes systemic inflammation (which can promote neuroinflammation) and drives immune-related inflammatory processes. Lean muscle mass, however, may be protective against inflammation.
The study involved more than 4,400 middle-aged and older men and women living in the United Kingdom. The participants' body composition, cognitive function, blood leukocytes (white blood cells), and variables such as age, education level, and socioeconomic status were measured every other year for a period of six years.
The authors of the study found that higher levels of body fat, especially abdominal fat, were associated with greater losses of fluid intelligence. The losses appeared to be related to sex-specific increases in blood leukocyte counts and inflammation, as evidenced by higher levels of C-reactive protein.
These findings point to the importance of maintaining a healthy body weight throughout life as a strategy to reduce or prevent cognitive decline.
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IQs of children whose mothers consumed fish during pregnancy nearly 5 to 10 points higher than those of children whose mothers did not eat fish. www.nytimes.com
A pregnant woman’s diet has considerable impact on her child’s health and development. Findings from two recent reviews suggest that maternal consumption of fish and seafood improves children’s performance on intelligence tests.
According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015-2020, seafood is a broad term that includes both fresh and saltwater fishes (such as salmon, tuna, trout, and tilapia) and shellfish (such as shrimp, crab, and oysters). Dietary intake of seafood provides many vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids that play key roles in a child’s neurocognitive development during pregnancy and early life. Seafood also contains mercury, a neurotoxicant. Questions remain about whether seafood consumption impairs neurocognitive development in pregnancy and childhood.
The authors of the review analyzed data from randomized controlled trials, prospective cohort studies, or case-control studies involving pregnant women and their children, including 29 studies of more than 102,000 mother-child pairs and 15 studies of more than 25,000 children under the age of 18 years. They found that even low intake of seafood – about four ounces per week – improved neurocognitive development among children. These improvements were manifested in an average increase of 7.7 points on intelligence tests. In addition, no negative neurocognitive outcomes were reported, even with high seafood intake, despite possible higher mercury exposure to mercury.
These findings have relevance for public health recommendations regarding dietary seafood intake among pregnant women and children.
- Link to full study.30192-9/fulltext)
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Maternal sugar consumption, particularly from sugar-sweetened beverages, was associated with poorer childhood cognition including non-verbal abilities www.sciencedaily.com
Maternal sugar consumption, particularly from sugar-sweetened beverages, was associated with poorer childhood cognition including non-verbal abilities to solve novel problems, poorer verbal memory, poorer fine motor, and poorer visual-spatial/visual-motor abilities in childhood.
The study also found that substituting diet soda for sugar-sweetened soda during pregnancy was also linked to negative effects. However, children’s fruit consumption (but not fruit juice) had beneficial effects and was associated with higher cognitive scores.
As with any observational study, it is difficult to establish causation. However, the data was adjusted for a variety of other health and socioeconomic factors which does strengthen the data.
Here is the long list of the health/lifestyle factors that the data were adjusted for: maternal age, pre-pregnancy BMI, parity, education, smoking status during pregnancy, maternal prenatal fish intake (the mean of the first and second trimesters), household income at enrollment, and the child’s sex and race/ethnicity,child’s birth weight, maternal marital status, intelligence, depression during pregnancy, pre-pregnancy physical activity levels, Western or prudent dietary pattern (calculated without fruits and sugar beverages), breastfeeding duration, paternal age and education, and HOME-SF score.