Food & the Mind

Just as the human fetus has long been thought capable of absorbing adequate nourishment even if the mother is starving, so the human brain has been considered able to develop normally even in a starving infant. But this could be an outdated thesis, said researchers at a Boston symposium on mental retardation convened by the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation. There is a growing body of evidence that mental retardation is sometimes the result of malnutrition, and in the case of premature babies, who by definition have not been nourished up to a normal birth weight, the effects may be seen even in as well-fed a society as the U.S. Elsewhere, three-fourths of the world's billion children are rated as undernourished, with horrendous implications for retardation of mental development.

Growing Brain. Though there are countless kinds of malnutrition, the researchers reporting in Boston concentrated on protein-calorie deficiency--an overall shortage of food, including a conspicuous deficit of protein. In Mexico City, reported Dr. Joaquin Cravioto, infants under six months old who had to be hospitalized for this type of malnutrition recovered but then developed much more slowly mentally than older children who suffered from the same condition. Studies in Yugoslavia indicate that such children fail to catch up even seven to 14 years later.

This failure, Dr. Cravioto suggested, may be related to the fact that a baby's brain grows fastest at birth and shortly afterward, gaining weight at the rate of about an ounce every two weeks. Reporting similar findings in laboratory animals, the University of London's Dr. John Dobbing said that underfeeding of newborn rats and pigs interferes with the growth of fatty, myelin sheaths around nerve fibers. And this brain damage cannot be fully repaired by normal feeding in later life.

Rh Factor. Such investigations into the causes and treatment of mental retardation are being greatly intensified. But the Kennedy Foundation's current awards, totaling a lavish $200,000, went for research done long ago and for work in caring for the millions of current victims. The winners:

>Drs. Alexander S. Wiener and Philip Levine, whose parallel work in New York City showed that the Rh factor is a major source of blood incompatibility, and that this incompatibility may in turn cause irreversible brain damage (personal awards of $6,250 each).

>Dr. Louis K. Diamond of Boston and Cornell University's Dr. Fred H. Allen Jr., for developing the technique of total replacement of a newborn baby's blood to avert the effects of Rh incompatibility (to each, $6,250 plus $25,000 for more research).

>Dr. Renee Silvie Portray, for leadership in setting up treatment centers for the mentally retarded in Belgium, and Mrs. Eloisa Garcia Etchegoyhen de Lorenzo, for doing the same in Uruguay (to each, a personal $12,500 plus $25,000 to carry on her work).

>The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis of Assisi (Mother Mary Romuald, Superior General) of Milwaukee, for education and care of the mentally retarded ($50,000). The sisters run the special school in Wisconsin where Rosemary Kennedy has lived since 1941.

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