A joint research group led by Professor Masako Meiwa of Kyoto University, fellow doctoral student Hideo Fujiwara, and Specially Appointed Professor Keisuke Hagiwara of Osaka University has revealed that emotional regulation in early childhood is related to the intestinal flora.
Along with the rapid maturation of the prefrontal cortex during infancy, it is known that ``emotion control,'' which controls one's own desires, develops markedly in late infancy (around age 4).However, there are large individual differences in emotion regulation during early childhood, and the factors and mechanisms that produce these differences remain unknown.
On the other hand, the basis of the intestinal flora that an individual will have for the rest of their life is determined by the time they are 3 to 5 years old.This period coincides with the remarkable development of emotional regulation.Based on the mechanism of the ``brain-gut-intestinal microbiota correlation,'' which has attracted attention in recent years, this research group believes that the intestinal microbiota may be related to the development of emotional regulation. We evaluated the intestinal flora, the underlying dietary habits, and the development of emotional regulation in 3 Japanese children between the ages of 4 and 257 attending kindergarten, and examined how they were related.
The researchers found that children at risk for developing emotional regulation had higher levels of the genera Actinomyces and Sutterella, which are bacteria that have been linked to inflammation, compared to children who were not at risk.In addition, regarding dietary habits, the group with difficulty regulating emotions tended to consume less green and yellow vegetables and had a higher rate of unbalanced eating.
The above results suggest that the risk of developing emotional regulation in early childhood may be related to the intestinal flora (particularly the presence of flora that has been shown to be associated with inflammation) and dietary habits that affect its composition. Ta.In the future, we will examine the developmental relationships and individual differences among emotion regulation, intestinal microbiota, and dietary habits over a longer period of time, and in the future, provide cognitive development support based on intestinal microbiota and dietary habits. It is hoped that this will lead to new developments in the law.
Paper information:【Microorganisms】Altered gut microbiota composition is associated with difficulty in explicit emotion regulation in young children
