A new study shows that babies who are born weighing 9 pounds or more are likely to have a bigger brain as teens.
Researchers say that size of the brain in heavier babies may impact the development of the brain in childhood, but a large scale study would help in studying this in depth and giving precise details. Usually brain development is a major concern among the preterm born babies.
"It has been well known for some time that premature birth and very low birth weight can affect brain development," said study author Kristine Beate Walhovd, a professor of neuropsychology at the University of Oslo in Norway in a report published in Medical Xpress. "This study shows that also normal variation in birth weight is predictive of brain characteristics many years later."
Walhovd further said that mostly the effect is on the information processing part of the brain.
"Although there was a relationship between such brain function and those areas of the brain, we did not find a connection between birth weight and the ability to process data," she said. "It is likely that the relation between birth weight and later brain characteristics is associated with normal genetic differences in growth, and these differences [in size] are not associated with brain function."
Rose Alvarez-Salvat, a pediatric psychologist at Miami Children's Hospital, did not quite agree with these findings as to how the size of the brain among normal weight infants and those who born after completing the 36-week term could affect in any way in later years.
"Very low birth weight babies can have developmental problems in terms of attention, memory and concentration," she said. "If you are looking at a normal group in terms of birth weight-6 pounds and up-you are always going to find a lot of variation," Alvarez-Salvat said in the same report published in Medical Xpress.
