Nutrition and Brain Development

영양과 두뇌발달

The mature human braun contains over 10 billion nerve cells (neurons), whose functions are directly related to the acquisition, transfer, processing, analysis, and utilization of all the information. There are also billions of glial cells, which serve primarily to support and to maintain the integrity of the neuron network and to synthesize an essential fatty strucfure, myelin. In the human brain DNA content therefore cell number rises rapidly until birth and then more slowly until $5{\sim}6$ months of age, when it reaches a maximum. While glial cells may be replaced, the more important nerve cell neurons can never be replaced once they are formed. Humans are born with their full complement of neurons and every neuron is as old as each individual. Thus prenatal malnutrition can seriously affect a person's entire life by severely inhibiting the production of neurons before birth.It has been demonstrated that in humans severe malnutrition during the fetal period and in infancy is associated with intellectual impairment. Severely malnourished children have brains smaller than average size and have been found to have $15{\sim}20%$ fewer brain cells than wellnourished childen. There is growing body of literature pointing to malnutrition as a cause of abnormal behavior as evidence that suggests these abnormalities may produce chromosomal damage that may persist forever. Although cognitive development in children is affected by multiple environmental factors, nutrition certainly deaerves more attention than it has received.