Impact of feeding habits on the development of language-specific processing of phonemes in brain: An event-related potentials study

Frontiers in Nutrition

Nutrition

Heather Downs¹  Yuyuan Gu¹  Darcy Hagood¹  David Keith Williams²  Linda J. Larson-Prior³  Seth T. Sorensen⁴  Aline Andres⁴  Graciela C. Alatorre-Cruz⁴ 

[1] Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, Little Rock, AR, United States;Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, Little Rock, AR, United States;Department of Biostatistics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, United States;Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, Little Rock, AR, United States;Departments of Neurobiology and Developmental Sciences, Psychiatry, Neurology, Pediatrics and Biomedical Informatics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, United States;Department of Pediatrics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, United States;Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center, Little Rock, AR, United States;

关键词: infancy;    infant’s diet;    language development;    stimuli awareness;    MMN;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnut.2023.1032413

 received in 2022-08-30, accepted in 2023-01-27,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

IntroductionInfancy is a stage characterized by multiple brain and cognitive changes. In a short time, infants must consolidate a new brain network and develop two important properties for speech comprehension: phonemic normalization and categorical perception. Recent studies have described diet as an essential factor in normal language development, reporting that breastfed infants show an earlier brain maturity and thus a faster cognitive development. Few studies have described a long-term effect of diet on phonological perception.MethodsTo explore that effect, we compared the event-related potentials (ERPs) collected during an oddball paradigm (frequent /pa/80%, deviant/ba/20%) of infants fed with breast milk (BF), cow-milk-based formula (MF), and soy-based formula (SF), which were assessed at 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months of age [Mean across all age groups: 127 BF infants, Mean (M) 39.6 gestation weeks; 121 MF infants, M = 39.16 gestation weeks; 116 SF infants, M = 39.16 gestation weeks].ResultsBehavioral differences between dietary groups in acoustic comprehension were observed at 24-months of age. The BF group displayed greater scores than the MF and SF groups. In phonological discrimination task, the ERPs analyses showed that SF group had an electrophysiological pattern associated with difficulties in phonological-stimulus awareness [mismatch negativity (MMN)-2 latency in frontal left regions of interest (ROI) and longer MMN-2 latency in temporal right ROI] and less brain maturity than BF and MF groups. The SF group displayed more right-lateralized brain recruitment in phonological processing at 12-months old.DiscussionWe conclude that using soy-based formula in a prolonged and frequent manner might trigger a language development different from that observed in the BF or MF groups. The soy-based formula’s composition might affect frontal left-brain area development, which is a nodal brain region in phonological-stimuli awareness.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Alatorre-Cruz, Andres, Gu, Downs, Hagood, Sorensen, Williams and Larson-Prior.