Children who are breastfed for longer have more gray matter in their brains

Being breastfed longer as a baby means having a greater volume of gray matter in the brain at ten years of age. This emerges from the largest study carried out with brain images of children between 9 and 11 years of age by researchers from the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute and the Sant Pau Biomedical Research Institute to explore the relationship between breastfeeding and development children’s brain

Until now, breastfeeding has been linked to various infant health benefits, including improved immunity and reduced risk of chronic disease, but less research has been done on its impact on brain development.

To advance in this field, Christian Stephan-Otto, scientific coordinator of the Pediatric Imaging Computational Center (PeCIC) at Sant Joan de Déu Hospital and Maria Portella, head of the Mental Health Research Group at the Sant Pau Biomedical Research Institute, analyzed magnetic resonance images of 8,000 children between the ages of 9 and 11 with the objective of evaluating the relationship between the duration of breastfeeding and the volume of gray matter in the brain.

“We found that the duration of breastfeeding was proportionally associated with a greater volume of a certain area of ​​the brain in children aged 9 to 11 years: the region encompassing the inferior frontal gyrus and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex,” he commented. Stephan-Otto, presenting the study results. And he has explained that these greater volumes of gray matter have also been associated with lower levels of impulsivity in these children.

Christian Núñez, first author of the article and researcher at the Institut d’Investigació Biomèdica Sant Pau, considers that “these findings suggest that breastfeeding may have long-term effects on the development of the brain and personality”, because these brain regions They play a very important role in decision making and emotion regulation, among other functions.

Specifically, the experts point out, the inferior frontal gyrus and the lateral orbitofrontal cortex are two important regions in the front of the brain that play crucial roles in semantic processing, decision making, and emotional regulation.

However, researchers have not been able to relate this greater gray matter with better school performance, with better cognitive functions in children or lower levels of anxiety or depression. “We have not observed differences in these aspects between children depending on the type of lactation or the time of breastfeeding,” admits Stephan-Otto in conversation with La Vanguardia.

And he emphasizes that the study is based on the analysis with modern statistical tools of a vast database on brain images, cognitive function, school performance, behavior and relationships with parents, among other aspects, of 8,000 children in the United States. “Of all these data, the only one in which we have seen indications that breastfeeding acts as a protective factor is impulsivity”, points out the researcher from Sant Joan de Déu.

Although previous research had already shown the clinical and cognitive benefits of breastfeeding, this study has made it possible to observe its effects at the brain level, the authors point out. And it has been seen, for the first time, that the greater volume of gray matter in this region has a direct impact on children’s levels of impulsivity, indicating that breastfeeding could be essential in personality development.

“These results are just the beginning” -says Maria Portella, co-coordinator of the study-, because “we hope to continue investigating how breastfeeding affects the brain and how we can use this information to improve infant health. With this project we have laid the first stone to show that there is a relationship, now we must better understand how this increase in the volume of gray matter is related to the cognitive and clinical benefits that we already know that breastfeeding has ”.

In this regard, Stephan-Otto believes that, in view of the results obtained, they should now continue to investigate the impact of breastfeeding in risk groups to analyze whether, for example, it reduces the risk of psychotic disorders. “The greater volume of gray matter that we have observed in these specific areas is a first clue that inspires us to continue exploring in a more targeted way about how breastfeeding can affect adolescent development,” says the researcher.