Dr. Chris Kuzawa, Professor, Northwestern University, Title of Talk: The high energy costs of childhood brain development: An unrecognized lever for obesity prevention
Abstract
Why do some children gain excess weight, increasing their long-term risk of becoming an overweight or obese adult? While it is common knowledge that weight gain results when an individual consumes more calories than they burn, what is less appreciated is the dominant role of the brain in the body’s energy expenditure during early life. Recent anthropological research shows that the brain accounts for a lifetime peak of two-thirds of the body’s calories at rest during childhood, resulting in a trade-off between the costs of brain development and the rate of weight gain. The brain’s unusually high costs during childhood trace not to brain growth, which is nearly complete at this age, but to the density of energetically costly synapses and related neuronal processes involved in learning. Psychology, genetic and brain imaging studies are independently confirming a trade-off between brain expenditure and body fat deposition. These new findings inspire the hypothesis that early cognitive enrichment, such as pre-K, could help reduce weight gain by increasing the body’s energy expenditure.
