The brain consumes half of a child's energy -- and that could matter for weight gain

大脑会消耗孩子一半的能量-这可能对体重增加有影响

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New paper proposes that variation in brain energy expenditure during childhood could be linked to obesity risk

新发表的论文指出，孩童时期大脑能量消耗的变化可能与肥胖风险有关

Weight gain occurs when an individual's energy intake exceeds their energy expenditure -- in other words, when calories in exceed calories out. What is less well understood is the fact that, on average, nearly half of the body's energy is used by the brain during early childhood.

当一个人所摄入的能量超过其所消耗的能量时，体重就会增加。换句话说，就是摄入的卡路里超过了消耗的卡路里。不太为人们所知的一点是，平均而言，在童年早期，身体几乎一半的能量都是被大脑所消耗掉的。

In a new paper published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), "A hypothesis linking the energy demand of the brain to obesity risk," co-authors Christopher Kuzawa of Northwestern University and Clancy Blair of New York University School of Medicine, propose that variation in the energy needs of brain development across kids -- in terms of the timing, intensity and duration of energy use -- could influence patterns of energy expenditure and weight gain.

一篇新发表于《美国科学院学报》的论文提出一个假设，这一假设将大脑对能量的需求与肥胖相联系。论文的合著者-西北大学的Christopher Kuzawa 和纽约大学医药学院的Clancy Blair提出，在儿童时间，大脑在时间、强度以及能量使用时长方面对能量需求的变化可能会对能量消耗的方式以及体重增加产生影响。

"We all know that how much energy our bodies burn is an important influence on weight gain," said Kuzawa, professor of anthropology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a faculty fellow with the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern. "When kids are 5, their brains use almost half of their bodies' energy. And yet, we have no idea how much the brain's energy expenditure varies between kids. This is a huge hole in our understanding of energy expenditure."

温伯格艺术与科学学院人类学教授、西北大学政策研究学院教职人员Kuzawa表示：“众所周知，我们的身体能够消耗多少能量对于体重的增加有重要的影响。对于5岁的儿童而言，他们的大脑会消耗身体几乎一半的能量。但是，我们目前还无从得知大脑能量消耗在孩子间的变化。这对于我们了解能量消耗还是一个巨大的未知数。”

"A major aim of our paper is to bring attention to this gap in understanding and to encourage researchers to measure the brain's energy use in future studies of child development, especially those focused on understanding weight gain and obesity risk."

我们论文的主要目的是将人们的注意力转向这一理解偏差并鼓励研究人员在未来的儿童发育研究中，特别是那些专注于了解体重增加和肥胖的研究人员，衡量大脑的能量消耗情况。

According to the authors, another important unknown is whether programs designed to stimulate brain development through enrichment, such as preschool programs like Head Start, might influence the brain's pattern of energy use.

根据作者的观点，另外一个重要的未知领域是旨在刺激大脑发育的项目，比如类似于Head Start的早教项目等是否会对大脑的能量使用模式产生影响。

"We believe it plausible that increased energy expenditure by the brain could be an unanticipated benefit to early child development programs, which, of course, have many other demonstrated benefits," Kuzawa said. "That would be a great win-win."

Kuzawa表示：“大脑能量消耗的增加可能会对儿童早期的成长带来未知的益处。而目前，大脑能量消耗已经为我们带来许多已知的好处。这可能是一个双赢的局面。”

This new hypothesis was inspired by Kuzawa and his colleagues' 2014 study showing that the brain consumes a lifetime peak of two-thirds of the body's resting energy expenditure, and almost half of total expenditure, when kids are five years old. This study also showed that ages when the brain's energy needs increase during early childhood are also ages of declining weight gain. As the energy needed for brain development declines in older children and adolescents, the rate of weight gain increases in parallel.

Kuzawa和他的同事在2014年的研究中发现一个新的假设。根据这个假设，大脑会在一生中消耗人体剩余能量的2/3，并在孩子5岁时消耗几乎一半的能量。该研究还指出，在童年早期的某个年龄段，当大脑所需要的能量增加时，其体重也会随之下降。当孩子年龄稍大些以及进入青少年时期时，大脑发育所需要的能量有所下降，而体重增加率也随之有所上升。

"This finding helped confirm a long-standing hypothesis in anthropology that human children evolved a much slower rate of childhood growth compared to other mammals and primates in part because their brains required more energy to develop," Kuzawa said.

Kuzawa表示：“这一结果有助于证实人类学中一个长期的假设，即与其他哺乳类和灵长类动物相比，人类儿童的成长速度要慢得多。这部分是因为大脑发育需要更多的能量。”

需要了解的词：

Weight gain:体重增加

Matter:有重大、重要影响

Energy intake：能量摄入

Energy expenditure：能量消耗

文章来源：科学日报   编辑：上海译锐翻译Susan