What's on Baby's Mind: The Developmental Origins of Adult Mental Health and Disease

Dr. Michael K. Georgieff is the Martin Lenz Harrison Land Grant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota. He is executive vice-chair of Pediatrics, and Co-Director of the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain at the University. He is an internationally recognized expert on the effects of nutrition on the developing brain, and specifically the effects of iron status on learning and memory processing. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers and is a consultant to the National Institutes of Health, UNICEF, and the American Academy of Pediatrics regarding the role of nutrition in brain development and brain health.

There is increasing evidence that environmental stimuli like nutrition influence brain development in the first 1000 days from conception. How the brain develops early in life influences not only how the young infant's brain functions but also influences its trajectory across the lifespan. It is the long-term lifespan effects that are the cost of early undernutrition to society. Dr. Georgieff will use iron deficiency as a nutritional example to discuss these findings and talk about the mechanisms by which early life nutrition affects brain health.