A few weeks ago I wrote a study that showed that exposing premature babies to Mozart music may lead to metabolic changes that facilitate weight gain and better medical outcomes. That study is an example of one credible and positive outcome that came out of the “Mozart effect’ craze. Unfortunately, most of the other claims, such as that listening to Mozart improves intelligence, have been discredited. So today I’m discussing a similar fad: making babies watch “educational” dvds or movies. For example, an entire industry has been developed to provide ‘educational’ dvds designed for infants and toddlers, such as the Baby Einstein DVD series reduced and marketed by Walt Disney. These dvds are marketed as developmentally appropriate for young children and able to facilitate the development of various cognitive skills such as language. For example, the dvd Baby Wordsworth is supposed to help babies learn 30 English words using child-friendly scenes (e.g., puppets, etc). Read More

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

This past week, while supervising the neuropsychology rotation of our doctoral students, I asked a student to clarify on a report whether the birth weight of a patient was “below or at expectation” for his gestational age. I explained that in most cases, it is not whether the baby was born prematurely, but whether his weight was “normal” for the length of the pregnancy.  Sometimes, being premature itself is not a risk factor for specific neurodevelopmental disorders. What is important in predicting healthy development is whether the baby shows typical growth up to the day of the birth – even when the birth day is significantly before the full term date.

In the latest issue of the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics there is a new epidemiological examination of the association between prematurity and autism that highlights the point I was making to my students. There are a number of studies that have found a link between prematurity and autism, in that premature babies are at greater risk for developing autism than full term babies. However, other studies have failed to replicate such findings. What could explain such discrepancy? One possibility is that it is not about being premature that increases the risk for autism, but instead such increased risk is due to complications and other factors associated with prematurity. If these variables have not been controlled similarly across studies then you will find studies providing conflicting results due to unknown, or uncontrolled, characteristics of the sample. 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

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