ArticleeLife2026
Growth in early infancy drives optimal brain functional connectivity which predicts cognitive flexibility in later childhood.
Article in eLife, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Characterizing developmental changes in infant habituation using functional change point detection.Neurophotonics · 2026Article
- Predictive associations between brain functional connectivity, motor abilities, and executive function development in early childhood: a longitudinal machine learning study.Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation · 2026Article
- Cross-paradigm fNIRS brain activity in 1-month-old infants across The Gambia and the United Kingdom.Neurophotonics · 2026Article
- Longitudinal habituation and novelty detection neural responses from infancy to early childhood in The Gambia and UK.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- Investigating Task-Free Functional Connectivity Patterns in Newborns Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.Brain and behavior · 2024Article
- The Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT) Project: Longitudinal cohort study protocol.Gates open research · 2023Article
- A Contextual Approach to Characterizing Caregiver Responsiveness in a Rural Area of The Gambia.Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant StudiesArticle
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Abstract
Functional brain network organisation, measured by functional connectivity (FC), reflects key neurodevelopmental processes for healthy development. Early exposure to adversity, for example undernutrition, affects neurodevelopment, observable via disrupted FC, and leads to poorer outcomes from preschool age onwards. We assessed longitudinally the impact of early growth trajectories on developmental FC in a rural Gambian population from age 5-24 months. To investigate how these early trajectories relate to later childhood outcomes, we assessed cognitive flexibility at 3-5 years. We observed that early physical growth before the fifth month of life drove optimal developmental trajectories of FC that in turn predicted cognitive flexibility at pre-school age. In contrast to previously studied developmental populations, this Gambian sample exhibited long-range interhemispheric FC that decreased with age. Our results highlight the measurable effects that poor growth in early infancy has on brain development and the possible subsequent impact on pre-school age cognitive development, underscoring the need for early life interventions throughout global settings of adversity.
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