An EEG to assess a baby's developmental risk?

Does exposure to stress early in life affect a baby's brain development, and is there a way to single out babies who might benefit from early intervention? A two-center study led by Boston Children's Hospital, published today in JAMA Pediatrics, used brain EEGs to begin to get at these questions in an objectively measurable way. It found that infants whose mothers reported high levels of stress have a distinct pattern of brain activity as measured by EEG -- at only 2 months of age.

"The EEG has been found to be exquisitely sensitive to perturbations in the environment, and thus we are not entirely surprised to see an association between stress in a mother's life and her infant's brain activity," says Charles Nelson, PhD, director of the Laboratories of Cognitive Neuroscience at Boston Children's Hospital and the study's senior investigator. "What we were surprised by, in part, was how early in life we see this association."

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