European Journal of Nutrition & Food Safety 5(5): 538-539, 2015, Article no.EJNFS.2015.156 ISSN: 2347-5641
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Optical Brain Imaging as an Assessment Tool for Nutrition Related Cognitive Development in Rural Gambia: Studies from Birth to 24 Months of Age Sarah Lloyd-Fox1, Drew Halliday2, Katarina Begus1, Helen Maris1, Maria Papademetriou2, Nick Everdell2, Momodou Darboe3, Andrew Prentice4, Sophie Moore4 and Clare Elwell2* 1
Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK. 2 University College London, London, UK. 3 MRC Keneba Field Station, Keneba, Gambia. 4 London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK. Article Information DOI: 10.9734/EJNFS/2015/20952 Special Editors: Lucie Bohac, Micronutrient Forum Secretariat, Canada. Klaus Kraemer, Director, Sight and Life, Basel, Switzerland. Chief Editor Prof. Hans Verhagen, Senior Scientific Advisor ‘Nutrition and Food Safety’, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), P.O.Box 1, 3720 BA, Bilthoven, The Netherlands.
Conference Abstract
Received 5th February 2015 st Accepted 1 March 2015 th Published 14 August 2015
ABSTRACT Objectives: Appropriate nutrition in the first 1000 days of life is essential for optimal brain development and function. Neurobehavioral assessments of cognitive function can only detect effects of nutritional deficiencies once they reach the point of observable behaviour, thus reducing the efficacy of early intervention strategies. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the use of optical imaging as an assessment tool for cognitive function in the first two years of life for nutrition based studies in a resource poor settings. Methods: Near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is an optical imaging technique which has been widely used to study cognitive function in infants in the developed world. Systems are portable and easy to setup, protocols are tolerant of participant motion, and non experts can easily be trained to perform the studies. We transported an NIRS system to a field station in rural Gambia to study infants from three age groups (4-8 month-olds n = 24; 9-13 month olds n = 26; 18-24 month-olds, n = 20) and used it to measure brain activation to visual and auditory social and non social stimuli. Results: Significant localised brain activation was seen during auditory social (e.g., laughter) compared to auditory non social (e.g., toy rattles) conditions - as well as to visual social (human _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Correspondence: Lucie Bohac, Coordinator, Micronutrient Forum Secretariat (email:
[email protected]) Note: This abstract was presented at “The Micronutrient Forum Global Conference – Bridging Discovery and Delivery”, 2-6 June 2014, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Lloyd-Fox et al.; EJNFS, 5(5): 538-539, 2015; Article no.EJNFS.2015.156
peek-a-boo) compared to visual non social (transport images). Conclusions: These results confirm the viability of optical neuroimaging in resource poor settings, and its potential as an assessment tool for nutrition related studies of cognitive function.
© 2015 Lloyd-Fox et al.; This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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