( Scientists today offered their first in...)Library Of Brains To Aid Study of Brain Development In Children,Health

Scientists today offered their first insights at research on a group of "super-healthy" children from six U.S. cities whose brains will serve as models of typical childhood development.

Initial results from the National Institutes of Health study suggest that healthy children perform better on cognitive tests than researchers previously thought - and this was particularly true among children from low-income families.

Yet, experts said today's conclusions - published in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society - are less important than what's to follow: digital images of the children's brains collected as they grow and develop. Those images, combined with results from the cognitive and behavioral tests, will serve as a guide to childhood brain development and a benchmark against which to compare the brains of children with developmental disorders and diseases.

The researchers also hope the results will help illuminate the underlying causes of developmental problems such as attention deficit disorder and autism. They plan to publish the results in a database and to make it freely available to other scientists.

"This database will be like a library of brains that investigators can use to compare to other populations of children with disease and disorders," says Deborah P. Waber, Harvard Medical School psychologist and lead author of the paper published today.

"If we understand the processes by which the normal brain develops and the ways it can go off track," she says "it might help us to develop more focused therapies so children can get back on track."

To find a group of healthy children, the NIH researchers screened more than 35,000 youngsters for medical, neurologic and psychiatric disorders, as well as for family histories that point to potential problems or prenatal exposure to toxins. Only 450 of the children met the strict criteria.

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