Heavier Babies Found to Have Bigger Brains as Teenagers

A new study has found that babies weighing more than 9 pounds at birth are more likely to have bigger brains when they grow up to become teenagers.

A recent study conducted by University of Oslo in Norway has found that the weight of a baby at birth is directly proportionate to the size of his or her brain as a teenager. The study found that babies weighing more than 9 pounds when born are more likely to have bigger brains when they grow up to become teenagers.

"It has been well known for some time that premature birth and very low birth weight can affect brain development," said study author Kristine Beate Walhovd, a professor of neuropsychology at the University of Oslo in Norway in a report published in Medical Xpress. "This study shows that also normal variation in birth weight is predictive of brain characteristics many years later."

Walhovd further noted that the part of the brain that processes information is most affected by the weight of a baby and the size of the brain.

"Although there was a relationship between such brain function and those areas of the brain, we did not find a connection between birth weight and the ability to process data," she said. "It is likely that the relation between birth weight and later brain characteristics is associated with normal genetic differences in growth, and these differences [in size] are not associated with brain function."

Rose Alvarez-Salvat, a pediatric psychologist at Miami Children's Hospital, did not quite agree with these findings, regarding how the size of the brain among infants of normal weight and those born after completing the 36-week term could be affected in any way in later years.

"Very low birth weight babies can have developmental problems in terms of attention, memory and concentration," she said. "If you are looking at a normal group in terms of birth weight-6 pounds and up-you are always going to find a lot of variation," Alvarez-Salvat said in the same report published in Medical Xpress.