Smarter Children Through Food Supplements

An anonymous reader writes "Baby rats (mmm...baby rats) fed a little extra choline in utero popped out with brain cells dramatically bigger and faster than pups who didn't receive the supplement. Duke University researchers say the implications are profound for humans and the future of learning."

Carefull.....

[BWJones]

Careful...... It should also be noted that in neurons in the hippocampus (and elsewhere), when the threshold for firing is decreased, the propensity for epileptiform discharges increases. The authors of the study claim that the neurons are bigger and fire more easily. I suppose that the ease of firing could simply be related to simple cable theory as predicted by Hodgkin and Huxley, but their explanation of increased dendritic count could also explain it nicely. However, other explanations could also be correct such as increased or upregulated glutamatergic channel count or increased receptor count.

researchers say the implications are profound for humans and the future of learning

At any rate, I regardless of the actual model, these sorts of public proclamations are troublesome as there are now going to be thousands upon thousands that will go out and start purchasing choline supplements just like their mass purchasing of melatonin (extracted from bovine pineal gland commonly, prion diseases anyone?), or ephedra (cardiac arrest anyone?), Aristolochia fangchi (kidney damage or cancer anyone?), shark cartilage (simply a lighter wallet anyone?), or any other unproven (not a troll, I am a scientist folks, so I want proof) supplement.

Not a chemist

[Kickstart70]

What does choline come from? Is it part of our foods, so that we could eat more of some weird vegetable?

Over excited brains

[Anonymous Coward]

So now we get to find out if overclocking the brain
with choline will lead to nasty side effects?

Re:Very profound...

[higuy48]

I would think that some percentage of Slashdotters would understand that a child who isn't challenged by schoolwork could turn into an outcast of some sort or, worse, could refuse to do work altogether. They will think of petty homework and tasks such as character charts and subjects such as The Renaissance as beneath their intelligence. I am going through a personal hell not being able to concentrate in my classes. It's all so uesless to me. Why am I reading this book? Why am I doing this math problem? I'm a writer. I need to write freeform! Anyway, that's basically the mindset of a kid who has given up on school.

Little confused about something

[modder]

What exactly does "reduce the brain's vulnerability toxic insults." mean? Perhaps there is some biological terminology I am not familiar with... Also, how can they claim this will help effects of long term memory loss?

Size doesn't equal smarts....

[MagicDude]

Well, the article just says that the baby brains are bigger than normal and the neurons seem to be firing faster, but there hasn't been any testing as to whether these guys are any smarter than the average bear (or rat). It does look interesting, but last I checked, in humans there hasn't been any correlation between hat size and IQ. Elephants and blue whales have the biggest brains on the planet, but nobody's calling them the most intellegent creatures in the world.

Doogie

[Joe Tie.]

I remember a while back a scientist bred a mouse strain with altered NMDA receptors, which gave a pretty hefty increase in memory and apparently reasoning. It'd be interesting to find what additional effects this method might have on them.

Choline Supplement

[Jodka]

You can buy choline in almost any of those stores which sell vitamins and nutritional supplements. I live in New York and there is one on every corner.

I read something similar about over a year ago in Science News magazine. Curious and willing to experiment on myself, I bought a jar of choline and started taking one a day.

Here's what I noticed:

First, its it's an intestinal irritant. Its sold in gelatine capusules and if you just swallow one a day, you'll be sorry after a while. I recommend opening the capsules and disolving the choline in something buffered, like milk.

You don't notice anything for a few weeks. And after you stop taking it, the effects persist for weeks.

The stuff is defintely psychoactive. I was constantly locked in deep thought. I finally stopped taking it because I got tired of thinking all the time.

Create or Cure?

[MoggyMania]

This strikes me as a bit bizarre.

Humanity already has a fairly well-known subgroup of people with brains that have more active neuronal structure, greater capacity for memory, a drastic reduction in age-related decline in cognitive/memorizations kills, and heightened sensory reactions. (Which is all wonderful to have, speaking firsthand.)

The response from the community has not been to embrace us. It has been to force us into painful "treatments" from a young age that train us to "act normal" -- to hide all signs that we're different, including strong natural interests in learning and pain at stimuli that doesn't bother sensory-average humans. There are huge organizations decrying how horrible it is that we exist at all, that actively claim it'd be better if we died of cancer, because we don't act just like "normal" people.

It strikes me as bizarrely hypocritical for one wing of science to be fighting to find a way to prevent/cure my kind, while another is attempting to learn how to intentionally create us. We're already here, we tend to reproduce reliably within families, we just need to be accepted rather than terrorized into hiding our abilities.

Re:Side Effects?

[Billly Gates]

Speaking as someone autistic, I can tell you that choline suppliments made my symptoms worse and increased my ADD when I was experimenting with them several years ago. I was using them as well as Omega-3 fish oil to see if it would help my symptoms or at least dampen my ADD so I could study more effectively.

WIth that, and the study this is becoming interesting indeed.

Re:Carefull.....

[www.sorehands.com]

uninhibits the cell division process in the memory centers of the brain.

Hmmm... doesn't that sound like potential brain cancer?

Re:Very profound...

[Denyer]

some percentage of Slashdotters would understand that a child who isn't challenged by schoolwork could turn into an outcast of some sort

Certainly true of some students in schools I've taught in. Many intelligent students adopt the time-honoured creed of "if you're truly smart, the smartest thing you can do is not to let them know how smart you are" as a coping device.

I certainly couldn't envisage sitting through the tedium of school again from a student's point of view... and yet, equally, there are a lot of students who fail to realise that studying a little chemistry or maths now gives them the base to take it further should they choose to later in their educational careers. So, ultimately, my advice would be to stick with it... make an effort to find something enjoyable or worthwhile about every task you're set whilst in education, especially if it involves opportunity to gently subvert the task; more teachers have a sense of humour about such things than you might think.

Re:Carefull.....

[yppiz]

If someone doesn't mod the parent as funny, I'm going to weep neuronal growth factor (NGF).

More on topic, changing one parameter of complex system that is possibly well tuned for what it does, but not well tuned for parameter changes, may result in a system that is far less efficient or even completely broken.

Imagine if you magically made it possible for signals to travel on ethernet faster than routers could process them. You might see an increase in congestion or in misrouted packets. This in turn could melt down the network, or at least make it impossible for anyone to use it.

I am not trying to say that this is what the researchers have proposed. I'm just pointing out that making one thing better can put stress on or even break the entire system.

--Pat / [e-mail]

Future of learning...(late night buzzed ramble)

[Erratio]

Before things are addressed on a chemical level, they need to be addressed on a psychological one. The educational system, at least in the States, has progressed very little in the past century, even though it has been pretty much established that different minds work different ways and the current methods for teaching cater to only a very small percentage of the people. All the choline in the world won't compensate for a lack of utilisation on what's already there, which, as it is, is most often neglected, or used in a way which results in burning out before full potential can be reached.

Not the problem

[Kelz]

"Duke University researchers say the implications are profound for humans and the future of learning."

The problem isn't with intelligence. Its a problem with the school systems. I am in high school right now and I'm amazed how dumbed down even my Calculus class is. What was grade school level 10 years ago is High school and college level today. We need to tighten the standards and make classes more challenging. There is a huge population of "smart" students but 90% of them just get by by taking the easiert classes possible. Half of my classes I don't even know why I show up.

that's not necessarily better

[hak1du]

A smarter rat doesn't necessarily correspond to a smarter human. And human intelligence isn't necessarily related to whether the hardware is faster. By analogy, a DSP may run operations faster than a Pentium, but that doesn't make the DSP a better general purpose processor. Or, as another analogy, just upgrading the clock circuit on your motherboard doesn't just make your processor faster--it may also make it flakier. It's plausible that choline is somewhat beneficial as a nutrient during pregnancy. But I wouldn't expect miracles (if choline were that important, women would crave more of it than they do), and there is at least the possibility that an unbalanced intake actually might do some harm.

Re:smarter....

[shadowbearer]

Thank you.

Teach. Don't assume that the school system will do it for you. Did when I was young. Rarely does anymore.

SB

Re:Carefull.....

[JanneM]

IANANSBIPTBOATL (I Am Not A NeuroScientist, But I Pretend To Be One At The Lab), but another possible risk I see is regarding neuronal damage from overexposure to signal substances. You already see this in the Hippocampus during high-stress events, when the inhibitory loop downregulating the Amygdala gives up and allows flooding the Hippocampus with neurotransmitters. This damages, even kills, cells in this area (and is likely to be part of the reason you get memory lapses around traumatic events). With bigger, faster cells with more connections, I would guess the activation threshold for damaging levels of the signal substance (acetyl cholin?) will be substantially lower.

So, tongue.in-cheek, you may get people able to learn very fast, but you better not upset them, or they will forget all recent experiences.

Re:Not a chemist

[wildsurf]

I could argue that humans were essentially fish eaters, but I doubt things are always that simple.

You must be talking about the Aquatic Ape Theory [aquaticape.org]. It theorizes that humanity went through an aquatic or semi-aquatic stage in our evolution, which accounts for several features of our anatomy and physiology.

(Admittedly, I'm partial to the Surfing Ape Theory [thatguy.com], myself.)

Two immediate reactions

[Mostly a lurker]

Animal studies do not always give an accurate indication of what will happen in humans. The article seems to have nothing proven relavant to humans.

Further, a typical human diet already includes choline. Assuming this is important to human brain development, how much do we really need? I can understand that rats (who typically probably do not eat fresh eggs very often) might need a choline supplement to enhance brain development. Perhaps humans already get enough anyway.

Might it be possible to identify the amount of choline different populations receive from their diet and correlate this with intelligence? This would give a better basis for discussion.

Re:Carefull.....

[whitespacedout]

On a related note, I have a friend who got into prenatal sound therapy [birthpsychology.com] for her two kids during gestation. They are way more hyperactive and brighter than their peers. Sure, it'd be easier for her if they both had prefrontal lobotomies, but they are really good, well-balanced kids otherwise. She's convinced the sound therapy made a great difference, and there is a lot of evidence due to a bunch of russian studies on the benefits of this. I'll definitely be going for the therapy too when it's time for me to spawn.

Re:Not the problem

[shadowmatter]

You say there is a huge population of "smart" students, but are they also motivated? Right now you say they're just getting by taking the easiest classes possible, which leads me to think that they're largely unmotivated. Thus if you tighten the curriculum, they're more likely to give up than try harder.

As someone who went through the same dumbed-down-Calculus experience with some friends...

1. If your lecture is dumbed down, read the textbook for the details
2. Read ahead
3. Talk to your professor, and ask him for a separate, more challenging curriculum
4. Go online and find more Math to learn; try some linear algebra [ucla.edu] or real [ucla.edu] analysis [ucla.edu], for example
5. Above all, don't rest on your laurels, and don't rely on the curriculum -- I can't believe how much time I "wasted" in high school, when in retrospect I could have been using some free time to learn some really cool shit...

- shadowmatter

Re:"Smarter children" B

[Gyan]

Young kids have roughly double to triple the synapses as an adult. The synapses get pruned due to lack of use. So your "stimulate the senses" is good advice, which is another way of saying Use It or Lose It. In the same vein, getting more neurons and increasing firing rate might help. It's certainly not automatically a false cure.

whether you believe that any significant insight comes in chemical form.

Are you a dualist? If not, your "experience" and "skills" are a matter of chemicals and connections. If you're referring to psychedelics like LSD (which I think you are), all they do is disrupt regular circuits. Any "insights" are a result of experiencing and processing those altered states. If you're unconscious and given LSD, you won't get any "insights". It's not the chemical that provides the insight (or even enables it, except in a technical sense).

Re:"Smarter children" B

[KingJoshi]

Young kids have roughly double to triple the synapses as an adult. The synapses get pruned due to lack of use. So your "stimulate the senses" is good advice, which is another way of saying Use It or Lose It. In the same vein, getting more neurons and increasing firing rate might help. It's certainly not automatically a false cure.

How do we know that "losing it" doesn't make us smarter? maybe it's a form of search tree pruning and learning heuristics as we grow. Maybe the trick is pruning the right ones.

It's hard enough to really test intelligence because people are skilled/talented/gifted at different things. But are there studies showing correlations between more synapses and being smarter in adults?

Profound, eh?

[poofmeisterp]

Let's start giving this to all of our kids!

Only the usual side effects apply: cancer, tics, siezure, SIDS, chronic headaches, brittle bones, frequent loose bowels....
But my kid will be SMART!!!!!

Interesting bias here...

[Chemisor]

> A bunch of Super intelligent, yet hyperactive and
> ruthless 9 year olds, with ultra fast reflexes and
> photographic memory, but total lack of
> self-control and morals

I wonder why everyone seems to assume that any improvement in human capacity is always accompanied by "total lack of self-control and morals". If any correlation is warranted, it is the reverse. Perhaps it is all just sour grapes?

Re:Hmm

[utexaspunk]

did you read the site you linked to????

Re:Not a chemist

[michael_cain]

...suppliment starchy plants with fish, insects and the odd rodent or two and you have the nearly perfect human diet, so far as I can determine. Without turning to fairly advanced tools you'll have a hard time catching and making a meal from a cow.

I agree with you that people seem well-suited to roots and other starchy plant products, nuts, berries, bugs and the occasional odd fish or rodent. Just looking at our teeth, we're clearly not designed to eat too much meat, or grains that are too hard.

Cow ancestors would indeed have been difficult for people without technology, but mainly because of their approach to defense -- circle the herd with the bulls on the outside and challenge the predators. OTOH, a human in excellent physical condition can run down a North American deer (that will flee rather than fight) in less than a day. Two people can do it with considerably less effort by chasing it in circles. Relatively hairless skin and profuse sweat glands that combine for very efficient cooling make it possible. Killing the deer once it is sufficiently exhausted requires nothing more complicated than a rock to hit it in the head with. I'm sure that there are corresponding prey animals in other parts of the world.

Overboard, but true...

[MacFury]

During my middle school and high school years my school district cut funding for the gifted class severely. The superintendent thought we were too elitist. This was before any serious budget crisis so lack of money was not the reason for lack of funding.

I didn't drop out of high school because of the pleasure of being in a class with intellectual equals. Without my gifted classes I wouldn't have the drive to succeed in life.

Re:Carefull.....

[Joe Tie.]

I used higher than recomended doses of ephedra for colds as well, if I absolutly had to make it to school. My heart is, and was in great condition, so I wasn't too scared about side effects. The end result was great - most of the cold symptoms would be masked, and the ephedra gave enough of a mood and energy boost that I wouldn't mind being sick at school at all. As far as I know, no one ever even realised I was sick during the times I used it. I wouldn't go as far as to suggest anyone else try that method (and in the US you don't legally have the right to decide for yourself anymore), but I loved it.