[Source:  Science Daily]

If you’re the parent of an infant, diaper duty probably isn’t your favorite part of the day. But you dutifully check the contents of each one because your pediatrician told you that color and consistency of what they leave behind can tell you a lot about their health. But what does a dirty diaper have to do with your baby’s brain?

According to first-of-their-kind findings from the UNC School of Medicine, the answer may be a lot.

Using fecal samples taken from dozens of one-year-olds and cognitive assessments of the same children a year later, researchers in the lab of Rebecca Knickmeyer, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, found an association between certain kinds of microbial communities and higher levels of cognitive development later on. The results were published in Biological Psychiatry.

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