Workshop: A Framework for Integrating Nutritional, Environmental, and Neuroscience Contributions to Children's Development

Purdue University, West Lafayette IN

Investigators

Abstract

Abstract Frameworks for Integrating Nutritional, Environmental, and Neuroscience Contributions to Children's Development T. D. Wachs & B. Lozoff A workshop is planned to focus on the Functional Isolation Hypothesis. This hypothesis can serve as a theoretical framework for integrating the linked contributions of nutrition, environment, and neuroscience to children's cognitive and socio-emotional development. The core of the hypothesis is the assumption that nutritional deficits simultaneously act to adversely influence both central nervous system (CNS) development and function, as well as the level of the child's involvement with their environment and the nature of parent-child transactions. Parent-child transactions and the child's involvement with their environments, in turn, can impact the child's CNS development and functioning. Within this framework developmental outcomes are viewed as the result of the operation of linked nutritional, environmental, and CNS influences. Using the functional isolation hypothesis to link nutrition, environment, and neurosciences, a workshop is proposed to bring together 15 leading researchers from these 3 domains to discuss critical core questions that are central to the integrated study of functional isolation at the human level. The goal is to form research networks among nutritional, environmental, and neuroscience researchers that will focus on the interdisciplinary study of the nature of functional isolation and its consequences for children's development.