Tag: intelligence

Categories : Neurology PaediatricsTags :

Concussions don’t Lower Children’s IQs, Study Finds

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Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels

The angst parents feel when their children sustain injuries is surely one of the universal conditions of parenthood. That anxiety is heightened greatly when those injuries involve concussions. But a new study led out of the University of Calgary, published today in the medical journal Pediatrics, may set worried parental minds slightly at ease.

Derived from data on emergency room visits in children’s hospitals in Canada and the US, the findings show that IQ and intelligence is not affected in a clinically meaningful way by paediatric concussions.

The study compares 566 children diagnosed with concussion to 300 with orthopaedic injuries. The children range in age from eight to 16 and they were recruited from two cohort studies. In the five Canadian hospitals that participated, patients completed IQ tests three months postinjury.

The US cohort was conducted at two children’s hospitals in Ohio, wherein patients completed IQ tests three to 18 days, postinjury.

“Obviously there’s been a lot of concern about the effects of concussion on children, and one of the biggest questions has been whether or not it affects a child’s overall intellectual functioning,” says Dr. Keith Yeates, PhD, a professor in UCalgary’s Department of Psychology and senior author of the Pediatrics paper. Yeates is a renowned expert on the outcomes of childhood brain disorders, including concussion and traumatic brain injuries.

“The data on this has been mixed and opinions have varied within the medical community,” says Yeates. “It’s hard to collect big enough samples to confirm a negative finding. The absence of a difference in IQ after concussion is harder to prove than the presence of a difference.”

Combining the Canadian and U.S. cohorts gave the Pediatrics study an abundant sample and it allowed Yeates and his co-authors to test patients with a wide range of demographics and clinical characteristics.

“We looked at socioeconomic status, patient sex, severity of injuries, concussion history, and whether there was a loss of consciousness at the time of injury,” says Yeates. “None of these factors made a difference. Across the board, concussion was not associated with lower IQ.”

The children with concussion were compared to children with orthopaedic injuries other than concussion to control for other factors that that might affect IQ, such as demographic background and the experience of trauma and pain. This allowed the researchers to determine whether the children’s IQs were different than what would be expected minus the concussion.

The findings of the study are important to share with parents, says Dr Ashley Ware, PhD, a professor at Georgia State University and lead author of the paper.

“Understandably, there’s been a lot of fear among parents when dealing with their children’s concussions,” Ware says. “These new findings provide really good news, and we need to get the message to parents.”

Dr Stephen Freedman, PhD, co-author of the paper and a professor of paediatrics and emergency medicine, agrees. “It’s something doctors can tell children who have sustained a concussion, and their parents, to help reduce their fears and concerns,” says Freedman. “It is certainly reassuring to know that concussions do not lead to alterations in IQ or intelligence.”

Another strength of the Pediatrics research is that incorporates the two cohort studies, one testing patients within days of their concussions and the other after three months.

“That makes our claim even stronger,” says Ware. “We can demonstrate that even in those first days and weeks after concussion, when children do show symptoms such as a pain and slow processing speed, there’s no hit to their IQs. Then it’s the same story three months out, when most children have recovered from their concussion symptoms. Thanks to this study we can say that, consistently, we would not expect IQ to be diminished from when children are symptomatic to when they’ve recovered.”

She adds: “It’s a nice ‘rest easy’ message for the parents.”

Source: University of Calgary

Categories : GeneticsTags :

A Blindness Gene That Also Increases Intelligence

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DNA repair
Source: Pixabay/CC0

A new study published in Brain shows that a genetic mutation which causes blindness in humans also increases intelligence, possibly through an increase in synaptic activity between the very same neurons damaged by the mutation.

The present study came about when Professors Tobias Langenhan and Manfred Heckmann, came across a paper on a mutation that damages a synaptic protein. The mutation caused patients to go blind, but then doctors noticed that the patients were also of above-average intelligence, something which piqued the two neurobiologists’ interest. “It’s very rare for a mutation to lead to improvement rather than loss of function,” said Prof Langenhan.

The two neurobiologists have been using fruit flies to analyse synaptic functions for many years. “Our research project was designed to insert the patients’ mutation into the corresponding gene in the fly and use techniques such as electrophysiology to test what then happens to the synapses. It was our assumption that the mutation makes patients so clever because it improves communication between the neurons which involve the injured protein,” explained Prof Langenhan. “Of course, you can’t conduct these measurements on the synapses in the brains of human patients. You have to use animal models for that.”

“75 per cent of genes that cause diseases in humans also exist in fruit flies”

Professor Tobias Langenhan

First, in collaboration with Oxford researchers, the scientists showed that the fly protein called RIM looks molecularly identical to that of humans. This was essential in order to be able to study the changes in the human brain in the fly. In the next step, the neurobiologists inserted the genetic mutation into flies. They then took electrophysiological measurements of synaptic activity. “We actually observed that the animals with the mutation showed a much increased transmission of information at the synapses. This amazing effect on the fly synapses is probably found in the same or a similar way in human patients, and could explain their increased cognitive performance, but also their blindness,” concludes Professor Langenhan.

The scientists also found out how the increased transmission at the synapses occurs: the molecular components in the transmitting nerve cell that trigger the synaptic impulses move closer together as a result of the mutation effect and lead to increased release of neurotransmitters. A novel method, super-resolution microscopy, was one of the techniques used in the study. “This gives us a tool to look at and even count individual molecules and confirms that the molecules in the firing cell are closer together than they normally are,” said Prof Langenhan.

“The project beautifully demonstrates how an extraordinary model animal like the fruit fly can be used to gain a very deep understanding of human brain disease. The animals are genetically highly similar to humans. It is estimated that 75% of the genes involving disease in humans are also found in the fruit fly,” explained Professor Langenhan, pointing to further research on the topic: “We have started several joint projects with human geneticists, pathologists and the team of the Integrated Research and Treatment Center (IFB) Adiposity Diseases; based at Leipzig University Hospital, they are studying developmental brain disorders, the development of malignant tumours and obesity. Here, too, we will insert disease-causing mutations into the fruit fly to replicate and better understand human disease.”

Source: Universität Leipzig