Healthy human newborns fed glucose solution prior to testing exhibit higher levels of blood glucose and are able to remember a spoken word for a longer time than infants who receive water. To determine whether a natural feeding affects newborn auditory memory and whether it is related to blood glucose, memory for spoken words was examined for two groups of newborns---one tested before and the other after---routine breast or formula feedings (pre- vs postprandial), using a partially infant-controlled habituation recovery paradigm. Prior to analyses, the postprandial group was split at the median for blood glucose to define two groups: high and low glucose. The results indicate that infants' memory for words is better after a feed than before a feed. However, better memory following a natural feeding is not related to blood glucose, implying that the ingestion of food may modulate memory by more than one mechanism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.29484 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Valiante, A. Grace (Antonella Grace) |
| Contributors | Young, Simon (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Psychiatry.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001940966, proquestno: MQ85834, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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