Nutrition is key to intelligence.

• Position: Infant development

What is the impact of infant nutrition on later development? Alan Lucas, head of infant and child nutrition, Dunn Nutrition Centre, Cambridge, England, led a research team which found that infants fed mother's milk with a formula supplement for four weeks postnatally had a significantly higher IQ at seven-and-a-half to eight years of age than those who received only formula. There was an 8.3 point advantage in IQ, after adjusting for differences between groups in mother's education and socioeconomic status.

"These findings, coupled with [an] earlier 18-month follow-up on the same babies [which showed major developmental advantages, primarily in motor skills, for the infants fed mother's milk), strongly suggest that there is, indeed, a critical, period when infant nutrition has a long-term influence on both intellect and neurodevelopment.

"Our hypothesis that mother's milk can be an important element in infant nutrition has a high degree of biological plausibility, considering that human milk contains several factors that can affect nervous system...