MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging 2017 | Page 24

Over the past 50 years, since the
publication of a seminal study of
young children in rural Guatemala,
researchers have been developing
ever-more refined understandings
of the relationship between malnu-
trition and cognitive outcomes. They
have been exploring the significant
negative impacts poor diet and other
symptoms of poverty can have later
in life—in terms of achievement
in school and even with respect to
mortality—and trying to find ways
to prevent these.
A number of studies have directly
targeted children’s diets, seeking to
improve cognitive outcomes by pro-
viding the children with nutrition
supplements. But these have been
shown to have little or no impact
unless they are combined with other
interventions—medical treatments
or social enrichment, for example—
leading some to abandon the idea
that the supplements alone can help.
Susan B. Roberts, thought other-
wise. Roberts, a senior scientist and
professor of nutrition at the USDA
Human Nutrition Research Center
on Aging at Tufts University, felt the
lack of success in the earlier studies
might not have been because food-
based interventions don’t work, but
rather because the studies didn’t use
the most optimal nutrition supple-
ments. Current recommendations
for those supplements, she noted,
do not include particular nutrients
that have been shown to be impor-
tant for cognitive health. With
support from local businessman Bill
Schawbel and the Boston Founda-
tion, she formulated a new food
supplement that incorporated those
21
nutrients and launched the study
in Guinea-Bissau to determine its
effect on cognitive performance and
growth. development. And for this, she
turned to an emerging noninvasive
and portable brain monitoring tech-
nology.
The new and improved nutrition
supplement wasn’t the only novel
aspect of the study, though. Most
previous
investigations
relied
on tests given to the subjects to
determine cognitive performance
and how it has changed over time.
Roberts wanted a more objective
measure of what was happening in
the brain, of how the new supple-
ment was actually impacting its The scientists set up a makeshift lab
in the one-room schoolhouse in
the heart of the village. As children
and their parents file in the lab
comes alive with spirited chatter.
The assembled are decked out in
patterned dresses, bright dashikis,
and T-shirts emblazoned with an
array of American characters and
brands—donated clothes from
across an ocean bought in second-