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Boosting pregnant women’s intake of DHA improves infants’ problem-solving power
Pregnant women who include optimal amounts of omega-3 fatty acids in their diets may boost their babies’ problem-solving skills, according to a new study.
Michelle Judge and colleagues studied 29 women, randomly assigning half to eat a cereal bar enriched with 300 mg of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) five times per week starting in the 24th week of pregnancy. The researchers later tested the women’s infants when the babies reached nine months of age.
In a test of problem-solving skills (in which the babies had to retrieve a toy placed on a cloth out of reach and covered so it was not visible), the babies of the supplemented mothers significantly out-performed the babies of mothers in the control group. No difference occurred during a separate test of memory skills.
The study is consistent with other research indicating that omega-3 fatty acids play a critical role in brain development
(see related article, Crime Times, 2005, Vol. 11, No. 1, Page 4).
Judge comments, “Our finding of better problem-solving abilities in the group of infants whose mothers consumed a prenatal DHA supplement supports the idea that DHA plays an important role in the development of attention required for infant goal-directed behavior and suggests that DHA consumption during gestation is particularly important for infant cognitive development.”
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“Maternal consumption of a docosahexaenoic acid-containing functional food during pregnancy: benefit for infant performance on problem-solving but not on recognition memory tasks at age 9 months,” M. P. Judge, O. Harel, and C. J. Lammi-Keefe, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 85, No. 6, June 2007, 1572-7. Address: Michelle Judge, Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06260.
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“Prenatal omega-3 fatty acid consumption improves infant problem solving,” news release, University of Connecticut, June 12, 2007.
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