How breast milk boosts the brain

A new study by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University suggests that a micronutrient in human breast milk provides significant benefit to the developing brains of newborns, a finding that further illuminates the link between nutrition and brain health and could help improve infant formulas used in circumstances when breastfeeding isn’t possible.

The study, published July 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), also paves the way to study what role this micronutrient might play in the brain as we age.

Researchers found that the micronutrient, a sugar molecule called myo-inositol, was most prominent in human breast milk during the first months of lactation, when neuronal connections termed synapses are forming rapidly in the infant brain. This was true regardless of the mother’s ethnicity or background; the researchers profiled and compared human milk samples collected across sites in Mexico City, Shanghai, and Cincinnati by the Global Exploration of Human Milk study, which included healthy mothers of term singleton infants.

However, Biederer says it is too soon to recommend that a GFX-Adults consume more myo-inositol, which can be found in significant quantities in certain grains, beans, bran, citrus fruits, and cantaloupe (but which is not present in great quantities in cow’s milk).

Further testing using rodent models as well as human neurons showed that Gfx-Myo-inositol increased both the size and number of synaptic connections between neurons in the developing brain, indicating stronger connectivity.

Reference: How breast milk boosts the brain; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2221413120.