The most important problem that the newborn child has to deal with is learning and understanding the world in which he lives. This problem may seem easy to adults. The adult has acquired detailed knowledge of the scope of the world. The child is faced with learning countless things within the scope of the world.
The development of active mental activities that enable the individual to understand and learn the world around him is called COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT. Cognitive development; It is the process in which the individual's ways of understanding the environment and the world and thinking become more complex and effective from infancy to adulthood.
Piaget, Bruner and Vygotsky tried to determine how and why the child sees and perceives the world around him at different ages.
DEVELOPMENTAL PERIODS ACCORDING TO PLAGET
Plaget divided cognitive development into four basic stages. These are respectively; sensory-motor, pre-operational, concrete operations and abstract operations periods. According to Plaget's team, the child completes his development in that period when he has all the schema family he needs to acquire in a period and forms the necessary cognitive structures.
Plaget believes that all children should go through these developmental stages in order. It cannot skip one developmental period and move on to another. However, the ages at which children enter and complete their developmental periods may differ from each other.
Cognitive development in children is affected by genetic and environmental factors. It has been determined that the potential for cognitive development in children is genetic, but adequate nutrition and rich stimulants also have positive effects on cognitive development.
It is a proven fact that the positive effects of adequate and balanced nutrition on public health. The human body is like a machine and needs energy to work, and in order to provide this energy, it is necessary to have adequate and balanced nutrition. Nutrition is not about filling the stomach, but about building new tissues in the body, repairing old cells, providing body resistance against diseases, in short, growth. It is defined as the intake and use of nutrients into the body for development and the continuation of a healthy life.
Every year, one million four hundred thousand babies in the world lose their nervous system. He is born with a serious disease that will have lifelong negative consequences regarding his development. The causes of these diseases are largely unknown. However, the existence of a connection between low birth weight and mental retardation, visual impairment, cerebral palsy, retinopathy, blindness and autism is an important clue.
Additionally, the frequency of these diseases is %10 in babies with birth weight between 3.5-4.5 kilograms. While it is 0.6-0.8, this rate increases to 20% in babies whose birth weight is below 1.5 kilograms. What these seemingly different diseases have in common is that they occur during the development of the brain. One of the most important factors in the development of the fetus (baby in the womb) brain is how the mother is fed. Because 70% of the divisions of brain cells are completed before birth. Since the placenta has not yet developed at this stage, the nutrition of the embryo depends entirely on the health and nutrition of the mother. It has been brought to light as a result of many scientific studies that there are many factors related to nutrition that are known to have an effect on cognitive development.
DO NUTRIENTS HAVE EFFECTS ON COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT?
If we look at fatty acids, first of all We see that fat is one of the basic nutrients necessary for human life. Fats are found in the natural composition of some foods and enable the body to absorb polyunsaturated fatty acids that cannot be produced in the human body. Polyunsaturated fatty acids are grouped into 2 groups: n-3 and n-6 fatty acids. The amounts of these polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 and n-6), which cannot be produced in the body and are considered essential due to their special functions, are especially higher in breast milk than in cow's milk. In addition, although breast milk contains alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), one of the n-3 fatty acids that have an active role in brain development, and eicosapentoenoic acid (EPA) and decosahexoenoic acid (DHA) synthesized from it, many scientific studies have shown that cow's milk does not contain these fatty acids. It has been shown in the study.
In the last three months of pregnancy, when brain development is rapid, the mother provides AA (Arachidonic Acid) from n-6 fatty acids and DHA from n-3 fatty acids to the fetus through the placenta. D with diet It has been observed in many studies that insufficient intake of HA negatively affects learning. It should not be forgotten that the development of the central nervous system depends on the quality and quantity of fats consumed in the last months of prenatal life and the first months of postnatal life. This is important for babies in the prenatal and postnatal periods. It provides breast milk with fats before and after birth through the placenta. Since breast milk contains all the nutrients necessary for immature brain development, it ensures the perfect and rapid development of neurological functions. Polyunsaturated fatty acids, especially DHA and AA, found in breast milk have a positive effect on neurological development. 60% of the brain consists of lipids (fats). DHA and AA are the most important lipid components that form the brain structure. While one study found that the blood DHA concentrations of breastfed babies were higher than those fed with formula, another study found that as the duration of breastfeeding increased, the cerebral cortex increased. DHA content was found to increase significantly.
In addition, significant correlations were found between erythrocyte DHA level and cerebral cortex DHA level. In a different study, they found a positive significant relationship between serum DHA concentration and Bayley mental and psychomotor development test results. In some studies, serum and erythrocyte DHA levels are lower in formula-fed babies compared to breast-fed babies, and in studies on primates and humans, the image acuity test scores of breast-fed babies are higher than in formula-fed babies, and this performance is related to erythrocyte DHA concentration.
As a result, it has been determined that the nutrients found in breast milk have significant effects on the neurological development of premature and normal-term babies.
n-3 and n-6 fatty acids, which are essential fatty acids, cause some desaturation in the organism. They compete for enzymes (converting saturated compounds into unsaturated ones). Therefore, the n-6/n-3 ratio in the diet is metabolically important. During growth in animals, n-3 fatty acids are It has been found that insufficient dietary intake of worms reduces DHA levels in the brain and retina, which in turn affects visual functions and learning performance.
Not a day goes by without a study supporting these results on the subject, for example, another study conducted on pregnant women and lactating rats were divided into 5 groups and given different diets with the n-6/n-3 ratio as low as 0.32 and as high as 49. It has been noted that dietary intake with a low n-6/n-3 ratio does not affect the birth weights of rat pups in the first days, but at the end of the 15th day, there is a 12% decrease in their weight. It has been observed that he continued during the periods when he could not replace him. It has been observed that diet clearly affects the brain fatty acid pattern, and as the dietary DHA level increases, the brain DHA level also increases, but the AA level decreases. Addition of AA to the diet increased brain AA levels and decreased DHA levels. While changes in the n-6/n-3 ratio of the diet did not affect the ability of rats to learn hidden places, it was observed that rats fed with a diet with a low n-6/n-3 ratio swam slower.
Preterm (born before term) In a study in which babies were given formula containing fish oil rich in EPA and DHA, an improvement in the visual functions of the babies was detected, while a decrease in their growth in the first years was noted. Decreased growth has been found to be associated with low psychomotor development scores. Although it is suggested that the n-6/n-3 ratio of the diet should be between 5/1-15/1, the consensus of the American Academy of Pediatrics is not clear on the requirement of essential fatty acids.
Many The research shows that polyunsaturated fatty acids have positive effects, especially on the development of babies' vision and neural functions. Breast milk is a very important source of essential fatty acids for babies. Technological developments in recent years have enabled the use of polyunsaturated fatty acids in clinical application areas. Before the 1990s, the ALA concentration of many infant formulas was found to be low. However, now in developed countries, ALA is added to all baby formulas. Some manufacturers in Europe and Japan Companies add DHA, DHA together with AA or 18:3 n-6 fatty acids to preterm (born before term) and term (born on time) infant formulas. It forms DHA. These polyunsaturated fatty acids are derived from dietary fatty acid precursors such as linoleic acid and ALA through a series of desaturations and elutions. AA and DHA increase rapidly in the brain in the 3rd trimester, when the growth rate of the brain is at its maximum in the early postnatal period and it is more sensitive to nutrient deficiencies.
A diet insufficient in n-3 fatty acids during the development period causes a decrease in the level of DHA in the brain fatty acid composition, It has been determined that it produces characteristic changes such as increased n-6 fatty acid levels. As a result of the research, it was determined that DHA plays a unique role in membranes with excitatory potential in the electroretinogram used to determine the effect of n-3 fatty acid deficiency on visual functions.
Although it has no effect on visual recognition, it has been reported that preterm babies fed with a DHA-supplemented diet have a shorter looking time. . This effect was seen in rhesus monkeys and longer looking time was found to be related to lower DHA concentration. It is thought that the reason for this may be related to the inability to switch attention from a visual stimulus.
In a recent study, ten-month-old babies fed a diet supplemented with AA and DHA had very low n-3 fatty acid content. It was observed that problem-solving skills improved when compared to babies fed with control formula.
In another study, contrary to this result, it was determined that the language scores of fourteen-month-old babies fed with formula containing DHA were lower. However, these effects have been shown to be temporary. It has been determined that chronic LNA deficiency in the diet in animals not only causes changes in retinal and visual functions, but also changes in performance in various learning and memory tests. Although the emphasis on learning is understandable in the context of a desire to identify nutritional factors in the development of human intelligence, there are various methodological reasons that create problems with this perspective.
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