Interesting Psychology Team
4 things proven to help baby brain development
The behaviors proven to aid and abet baby brain development in the womb—especially important in the second half of pregnancy—all follow the Goldilocks principle. We will look at four of these balancing acts:
• weight
• nutrition
• stress
• exercise
And there’s not a pregaphone in sight.
1. Baby Brain Development During Pregnancy
You’re pregnant, so you need to eat more food. And if you don’t overdo it, you will grow a smarter baby. Why? Your baby’s IQ is a function of her brain volume. Brain size predicts about 20 percent of the variance in her IQ scores (her prefrontal cortex, just behind her forehead, is particularly prescient). Brain volume is related to birth weight, which means that, to a point, larger babies are smarter babies.
The fuel of food helps grow a larger baby. Between four months and birth, the fetus becomes almost ridiculously sensitive to both the amount and the type of food you consume. We know this from malnutrition studies. Babies experiencing a critical lack of nutriment have fewer neurons, fewer and shorter connections between the neurons that exist, and less insulation all around in the second trimester. When they grow up, the kids carrying these brains exhibit more behavioral problems, show slower language growth, have lower IQs, get worse grades, and generally make poor athletes.
IQ rises with birth weight, up to 8 pounds
How big should baby grow? Here’s another balancing act. A baby’s IQ rises steadily with birth weight, up to about 8 pounds. The job is mostly done prior to this benchmark: There is only 1 IQ point difference between a 6.5-pounder and a 7.5-pounder. Above 9 pounds, IQ actually drifts down a bit, about 1 point on average. This loss probably occurs because larger babies are more likely to experience hypoxia—a restriction of oxygen—or other injuries during birth.
How much do you need to eat? That depends upon how fit you are going into the pregnancy. The bad news is that 55 percent of women of childbearing age in the United States are already too fat. Their Body Mass Index, or BMI, which is a kind of a “gross domestic product” of how fat you are, is between 25 and 29.9. If that’s you, then you need to gain only about 15 to 25 pounds to create a healthy baby, according to the Institute of Medicine. You want to add about half a pound a week in the critical second and third trimesters of pregnancy. If you are underweight, with a typical BMI of less than 18.5, you need to gain between 28 and 40 pounds to optimize your baby’s brain development. That’s about a pound a week in the critical last half of pregnancy. This is true for women of normal weight, too.
So, the amount of fuel is important. There is increasing evidence that the type of fuel you eat during the critical period is important, too. The next balance comes between foods that a pregnant mom wants to eat and foods that are optimal for a baby’s brain development. Unfortunately, they are not always the same thing.
