Foundation of the Mind: Dose-Dependent Fish Oil Supplementation from Specified Marine Animals and Their Effects on Brain Development and Sensory Function

Foundation of the Mind: Dose-dependent fish oil supplementation from specified marine animals and their effects on brain development and sensory function

Michael Johnson

The University of Texas at Dallas

Tonja Wissinger

06/30/11 

Foundation of the Mind: Dose-dependent fish oil supplementation from specified marine animals and their effects on brain development and sensory function

There are many nurturing factors that aid in developing a brain of optimum health and cognitive performance such as sleep and mental exercises, but this paper will focus on how fish oils assist in an individual’s cognitive development form prenatal to infant. Cognitive development deals with the growth, maintenance, and sustenance of mental abilities such as perception, memory, speech, problem solving, reasoning, understanding concepts, and being metacognitive and socially cognitive. This area of study is in the field of neurology and behavioral science. Tests were on children up to 4 years of age to determine their cognitive and visual development and on animals to determine brain development and sensory function, who did or did not receive fish oil supplementation. These tests provide evidence that manifest benefits and risks of supplementation on cognitive, visual, and auditory development, and sensory function.

Neurologists debate the efficacy of fish oil supplementation in that some find that supplementation association with higher cognitive development so small that they claim the results to be inconclusive while others find that the benefits are clear and outweigh risks. Some found better cognitive performance to be associated with dosage while others found that because of the limited research to suggest better cognitive development in children above the age of 2 years, it is still inconclusive.

Dose-dependent fish oil supplementation and the consumption of certain marine species, both containing omega-3 fatty acids, in children from prenatal to infant enhances brain development and sensory function that can be tested up to 4 years after birth.

The earliest Greek philosophers, known as the natural philosophers, were dissatisfied with the current explanations for natural process, and made their mark in history by studying and questioning the natural processes in the world; and their questions and conclusions opened the doors to examine the brain and its cognitive processes. The natural philosophers noted that all things of nature were continuously undergoing a process of transformation. These philosophers began to pose questions concerning all things of nature: its origins, substance, and destination (Gaarder 1994). For example, if the natural philosophers were to pose questions about the brain and cognitive function,