Early Postnatal Protein-Calorie Malnutrition and Cognition: A Review of Human and Animal Studies

Malnutrition continues to be recognized as the most common and serious form of children's dietary disease in the developing countries and is one of the principal factors affecting brain development. The purpose of this paper is to review human and animal studies relating malnutrition to cognitive development, focusing in correlational and interventional data, and to provide a discussion of possible mechanisms by which malnutrition affects cognition.