MALNUTRITION AND THE BRAIN - CHANGING CONCEPTS, CHANGING CONCERNS

Our conceptions of how malnutrition endured early in life affects brai n development have evolved considerably since the mid-1960s. At that t ime, it was feared that malnutrition endured during certain sensitive periods in early development would produce irreversible brain damage p ossibly resulting in mental retardation and an impairment in brain fun ction. We now know that most of the alterations in the growth of vario us brain structures eventually recover (to some extent), although perm anent alterations in the hippocampus and cerebellum remain. However, r ecent neuropharmacological research has revealed long-lasting, if not permanent, changes in brain neural receptor function resulting from an early episode of malnutrition. These more recent findings indicate th at the kinds of behaviors and cognitive functions impaired by malnutri tion may be more related to emotional responses to stressful events th an to cognitive deficits per se, the age range of vulnerability to the se long-term effects of malnutrition may be much greater than we had s uspected and the minimal amount of malnutrition (hunger) necessary to produce these long-term alterations is unknown.