Do you remember the Mozart Effect? In the 1990s a small yet very influential study showed that listening to classical music, and in particular Mozart, improved test performance in college students -thus Mozart must make you smarter! The public reacted and an entire industry was born. Parents rushed to the stores to purchase Mozart CDs so they could play it to their unborn children (hopefully not Mozart’s Requiem – which, although is one of my favorite works of all time, it is bound to traumatize anyone under 14). Even the State of Georgia passed a law requiring the free distribution of CDs to new mothers! The Governor at the time was widely quoted saying:

As you know, the brain has two lobes. The studies show that music engages both hemispheres of the brain — its creativity and emotion engage the right lobe, while rhythm and pitch engage the left. So people who receive musical exposure at a young age develop a bundle of nerves that connects those two halves* Read More

Thank you everyone for your patience during the two-week break in child-Psych.  As some of you know, I just relocated from Pittsburgh to Michigan where I started my new research program while working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology of The University of Michigan. The transition is time consuming but I’m finally all settled in the new town and I’m almost fully operational. I hope that I’ll be able to write several weekly updates to child-psych starting this week.

Last night I had a chance to start reading again and an article published in Pediatrics caught my attention. The article reported the findings of a study examining the link between father’s depression and infant excess crying or colic.  The study appears to continue a line of research that explores the often neglected role of father’s mental health on the child’s development. For example, recently I commented on the effects of father-daughter bond on the quality of the daughters romantic relationships, and on a study examining the impact of fathers (not mothers) postpartum depression on the child’s language development. Read More

Yesterday I discussed a study on the possible link between the length and weight of a baby at birth and later intellectual functioning. One of the major strengths of that study was that they examined variations in weight and height in babies born within the normal range in terms of size and gestational age (not premature).  Among premature babies, the research has consistently shown an increased risk for later deficits, including lower intellectual capacity, higher rates of ADHD, learning disabilities, and other conduct problems. Yet the nature, or underlying neurocognitive mechanisms behind these deficits are poorly understood.

Deficits in executive functioning has been examined as a possible source of impairment in premature children. However, executive functioning is a broad term that refers to a number of cognitive processes, such as working memory, cognitive control, planning and organizing, etc, and it is unknown which of these components of executive functioning is particularly affected in preterm children. Read More

I was reading through the last issue of the journal Pediatrics and encountered a study that made me think about a previous post I wrote concerning the effects of Father’s postpartum depression. This new study explored the increasing practice by pediatricians and family doctors of screening for postpartum depression during well-baby checkups.

This new study was conducted by a group of researchers at the University of Colorado at Denver.  The authors examined data from the Colorado Adolescent Maternity Program. This program was designed to provide care to 12 to 21-year-old mothers mostly from low income, under-served backgrounds.  The authors wanted to explore the prevalence and incidence of parental depression and the effectiveness of an electronic screening reminder system for clinicians. Specifically, during a well baby visit, an electronic cue appeared on the patient’s electronic record requesting the clinician to administer a postpartum depression screening instrument. Read More

It is fascinating that infant movements can serve as a window into their developing brain. Numerous studies have shown that the quality of infant movements, especially among premature babies, strongly predicts whether the infant will have motor and neurological problems. The basic idea is that in normal development, infants move in very predictable ways, such as deviations from this ‘norm’ may reflect anomalies in brain development.

Most of the original research reports on infant movements have been focused on motor problems. It makes sense that motor movements would reflect the development of motor regions of the brain. However, some researchers have suggested that infant movements also reflect the integrity of regions of the brain near the motor cortex that are in charge of cognitive and emotional control. Thus, it is sensible to predict that anomalies in infant motor movements may also predict cognitive and social functioning later in life. Read More