City children with asthma are more likely to have problems with behavior than children without chronic respiratory problems, according to a Medical Center study in this month's Pediatrics.
"The stress related to having asthma might contribute to behavioral problems because the family's focus on the medical issue may make managing behavior more difficult. Or, on the other hand, behavior problems may make managing asthma symptoms more difficult," says lead author Jill Halterman, assistant professor at Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong. Halterman, who conducted her study with the help of the University-affiliated Children's Institute, says that while it is
difficult to determine if the asthma or the behavior trouble came first, it is apparent that both must be addressed when treating the child.
Researchers have long wondered why certain fundamental characteristics of grammar are present in all languages, and now a team of scientists at the University has found evidence that these properties are built into the way our brains work. The report, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines deaf individuals who have been isolated from conventional sign, spoken, and written language their entire lives, and yet still developed a unique form of gesture communication.
For eight years, Elissa Newport, George Eastman Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics, and Marie Coppola, a postdoctoral student at the University of Chicago, studied three deaf Nicaraguan boys who had no exposure to any formal language. This isolation forced each of the three boys to develop their own gestural-based language, called 'home sign systems' in the field of sign language research. These three isolated languages gave Coppola and Newport a window into how the brain creates language.
"Our findings suggest that certain fundamental characteristics of human language systems appear in gestural communication, even when the user has never been exposed to linguistic input and has not descended from previous generations of skilled communicative partners," says Newport.
Researchers at the Medical Center have found another reason to keep those fancy baby spoons in the drawer until infants reach six months old. Babies who are breastfed
exclusively for the first six months have fewer cases of pneumonia and ear infections than babies who were introduced to other foods between four and six months.
The study, in February's Pediatrics, is the first to document a decreased risk for respiratory-tract infections during the first two years for children who receive only breast milk until they are six months old.
The study was led by Caroline Chantry of the University of California Davis Medical Center, but was executed largely at Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong with the help of Cynthia Howard, associate professor of pediatrics, and Peggy Auinger, senior research analyst. Howard also is the pediatric director of the mother-baby unit at Rochester General Hospital.
"This study supports the current recommendation to exclusively breastfeed healthy term babies until they are six months old," Howard says. "Even two months makes a difference."
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Research Roundup
Asthma and bad behavior?
Hardwired for grammar
Breast milk only
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