Futurity hops on the lactation train with a study that proves breastfed babies grow their brains earlier and better:
[T]his is the first imaging study that looked for differences associated with breastfeeding in the brains of very young and healthy children, says Sean Deoni, assistant professor of engineering at Brown University.
“We wanted to see how early these changes in brain development actually occur. We show that they’re there almost right off the bat.”
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Researchers looked at 133 babies ranging in ages from 10 months to four years. All of the babies had normal gestation times, and all came from families with similar socioeconomic statuses.
Babies were split into three groups: those whose mothers reported they exclusively breastfed for at least three months, those fed a combination of breastmilk and formula, and those fed formula alone. The researchers compared the older kids to the younger kids to establish growth trajectories in white matter for each group.
The exclusively breastfed group had the fastest growth in myelinated white matter of the three groups, with the increase in white matter volume becoming substantial by age 2. The group fed both breastmilk and formula had more growth than the exclusively formula-fed group, but less than the breastmilk-only group.
“We’re finding the difference (in white matter growth) is on the order of 20 to 30 percent, comparing the breastfed and the non-breastfed kids,” Deoni says. “I think it’s astounding that you could have that much difference so early.”
The researchers then backed up their imaging data with a set of basic cognitive tests on the older children. Those tests found increased language performance, visual reception, and motor control performance in the breastfed group.