BRAIN MAPPING

BRAIN MEANDERING PATHWAY 

                                                                      

Maturity, the thinking goes,

comes with age. However, this

the journey from childhood to

adulthood is uneven: some

mental attributes surface faster than others, some are

more pronounced in girls,

and poverty and trauma have

an outsized influence on cognitive development, says one

of the largest studies of its

kind, spanning nearly 9,000

children and young adults

from India.

The C­Veda

The study is part of a long-term project called the ‘Consortium on Vulnerability to

Externalizing Disorders and

Addictions’ (C­Veda). It aims

to follow up on those tested over

decades, and evaluate the effect of biological and environmental risk on cognitive

development.

Brain development progresses from childhood to early adulthood with wide­ranging connections among

neurons in multiple parts of

the brain. This connectivity significantly influences abilities such as temporarily holding chunks of information,

called ‘working memory (for

instance, memorizing a phone

the number before writing it

down) and ‘set shifting’ (iterating multiple ways to solve a

puzzle). These skills are classified as executive functions.

Another category of functions, called social cognition

help mediate relationships.

A consortium of psychiatrists, neurologists, and psychologists from India and the U.K.,

investigating the Role of Environment and Genetics on

brain development analyzed

four kinds of executive functions: verbal working memory, visuo­spatial working memory, response inhibition (the

ability to stop one task and begin another), set­shifting and

two kinds of social cognition:

faux pas recognition (inferring

social cues) and emotion recognition (inferring another’s

state of mind).

They report, in the April

2023 edition of the peer­reviewed Asian Journal of Psychiatry, that ‘working memory’ develops first, followed by

inhibitory control and finally

cognitive flexibility. However,

certain abilities such as visual

and verbal reasoning stabilized by late adolescence and

didn’t rise as people aged, whereas cognitive ability and

emotional cognition continued to develop even after

adolescence, Eesha Sharma,

the lead author of the study, Senior Resident Department of Psychiatry National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences Bangalore - 560029. 

The studies, spanning a

range of socio­economic

groups, ages, urbanization

and gender also found that

children who manifested certain traits to a high degree outperformed their peers in that

skill even as they aged, while other traits didn’t constitute a

permanent advantage.

“Response inhibition has a

ceiling. If you are low performing early on, you will

catch up as you grow older. It

was the other way, however,

in verbal working memory. Those who did well in early

childhood continued to significantly outperform their

peers,” said Dr. Sharma, an assistant professor at the National Institute of Mental Health

and Neurosciences, Bengaluru. “However, what all this

means in the real world is a

question that we are still analyzing.”  

Complex abilities

The more ‘complex abilities’ —

response inhibition, cognitive

flexibility, and emotion recognition — are “maximally impacted” by environments

such as poverty or childhood

adversity. “No matter which ability

you are looking at, children in

wealthier households do better,” she said. 

C­Veda expects to map the

brains of those participating

in the study and evaluate and

compare neurologically

development. “If we can generate brain development charts across ages, just like how there are

charts for physical growth, it

could be a valuable tool in

schools and mental health assessments,” Dr. Sharma said.