Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania scientists reveal effects of early learning that last decades
From
Virginia Tech
May
31, 2021 -- An enhanced learning environment during the first five years of
life shapes the brain in ways that are apparent four decades later, say
Virginia Tech and University of Pennsylvania scientists writing in the June
edition of the Journal of
Cognitive Neuroscience.
The researchers used structural brain
imaging to detect the developmental effects of linguistic and cognitive stimulation
starting at six weeks of age in infants. The influence of an enriched
environment on brain structure had formerly been demonstrated in animal
studies, but this is the first experimental study to find a similar result in
humans.
“Our research shows a relationship
between brain structure and five years of high-quality educational and social
experiences,” said Craig Ramey, professor and distinguished research
scholar with the Fralin Biomedical
Research Institute at VTC and principal investigator of the
study. “We have demonstrated that in vulnerable children who received
stimulating and emotionally supportive learning experiences, statistically
significant changes in brain structure appear in middle age.”
The results support the idea that early
environment influences the brain structure of individuals growing up with
multirisk socioeconomic challenges, said Martha Farah, director of the
Center for Neuroscience & Society at Penn and first author of the
study.
“This has exciting implications for the
basic science of brain development, as well as for theories of social
stratification and social policy,” Farah said.
The study follows children who have
continuously participated in the Abecedarian
Project, an early intervention program initiated by Ramey in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, in 1971 to study the effects of educational, social, health,
and family support services on high-risk infants.
Both the comparison and treatment groups
received extra health care, nutrition, and family support services; however,
beginning at six weeks of age, the treatment group also received five years of
high quality educational support, five days a week, 50 weeks a year.
When scanned, the Abecedarian study
participants were in their late 30s to early 40s, offering the researchers a
unique look at how childhood factors affect the adult brain.
“People generally know about the
potentially large benefits of early education for children from very low
resource circumstances,” said co-author Sharon Landesman Ramey, professor
and distinguished research scholar with the Fralin Biomedical Research
Institute and the Virginia Tech College
of Science. “The new results reveal that biological effects accompany
the many behavioral, social, health, and economic benefits reported in the
Abecedarian Project. This affirms the idea that positive early life experiences
contribute to later positive adjustment through a combination of behavioral,
social, and brain pathways.”
During follow-up examinations,
structural MRI scans of the brains of 47 study participants were conducted at
the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Human Neuroimaging Lab. Of those, 29
individuals had been in the group that received the educational enrichment
focused on promoting language, cognition, and interactive learning.
The other 18 individuals received the
same robust health, nutritional, and social services supports provided to the
educational treatment group, and whatever community childcare or other learning
their parents provided. The two groups were well matched on a
variety of factors such as maternal education, head circumference at birth, and
age at scanning.
Analyzing the scans, the researchers
looked at brain size as a whole, including the cortex, the brain’s outermost
layer, as well as five regions selected for their expected connection to the
intervention’s stimulation of children’s language and cognitive
development.
Those included the left inferior
frontal gyrus and left superior temporal gyrus, which may be relevant to
language, and the right inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral anterior cingulate
cortex, relevant to cognitive control. A fifth, the bilateral hippocampus, was
added because its volume is frequently associated with early life adversity and
socioeconomic status.
The researchers determined that those in
the early education treatment group had increased size of the whole brain,
including the cortex.
Several specific cortical regions also
appeared larger, according to study co-authors Read Montague, professor and
director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab and Computational Psychiatry Unit at the
Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, and Terry Lohrenz, research assistant
professor and member of the institute’s Human Neuroimaging Laboratory.
The scientists noted the group
intervention treatment results for the brain were substantially greater for
males than for females. The reasons for this are not known, and were
surprising, since both the boys and girls showed generally comparable positive
behavioral and educational effects from their early enriched education. The
current study cannot adequately explain the sex differences.
“When we launched this project in the
1970s, the field knew more about how to assess behavior than it knew about how
to assess brain structure,” said Craig Ramey, who is also a professor in the
Virginia Tech College of Science. “Because of advances in neuroimaging
technology and through strong interdisciplinary collaborations, we were able to
measure structural features of the brain. The prefrontal cortex and areas
associated with language were definitely affected; and to our knowledge, this
is the first experimental evidence on a link between known early educational
experiences and long-term changes in humans.”
“We believe that these findings warrant
careful consideration and lend further support to the value of ensuring
positive learning and social-emotional support for all children – particularly
to improve outcomes for children who are vulnerable to inadequate stimulation
and care in the early years of life,” Craig Ramey said.
The study was supported by a Principal
Research Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust, Virginia Tech, the School of Arts
and Sciences Research Fund, University of Pennsylvania, and the William N.
Sternberg Fund for Human Information-Processing Research.
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