Research suggest that certain regions of the brain might develop more quickly in young infants for evolutionary reasons.
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WASHINGTON: The parts of the human brain that grow the most during infancy and childhood are nearly identical to the brain regions that have changed the most when humans are compared to primates, a recent study has shown.
Researchers made the discovery as they conducted a study to try to better understand abnormal brain development in premature babies and assess the long-term effects of premature birth on brain development.
The number of babies born before term in the United States has risen steadily to reach 12% of all births, said Terrie Inder from Washington University in St Louis and lead author of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Disorders due to brain structure
Babies born prematurely face a greater risk of having learning disabilities, attention deficits, behavioral problems and cognitive impairments, according to the researchers.
"This study and the data that we're gathering now could provide us with very powerful tools for understanding what goes wrong structurally in a wide range of childhood disorders," Inder said.
The researchers hope to gain insight into the after-effects of premature birth and even conditions such as autism, attention-deficit disorder or reading disabilities, they said.
Uneven growth points to evolution
The researchers used a technique called surface reconstruction to compare regions and structures in different brains.
In analysing the brain scans of 12 full-term babies and comparing them to the scans of 12 healthy young adults, the researchers found that the cerebral cortex - the wrinkled area on the surface of the brain responsible for higher mental functions - grew unevenly.
A quarter to a third of the cortex expanded around twice as much as other cortical areas during normal development.
