Adequate systolic blood pressure regulation during an orthostatic challenge is associated with better cognitive performance in preschool-aged children.
Orthostatic BP regulation may mark early cognitive skills in preschoolers; hypothesis-generating and requires longitudinal confirmation before any practice implications.
The postural shift from lying to standing may provide a challenge for maintaining adequate blood flow to the brain. Cerebral perfusion in response to the shift to upright posture is affected by a variety of factors including the health of the cardiovascular system and a slight increase in orthostatic systolic blood pressure (SBP). In this study, cognitive functioning was examined in Hispanic American preschoolers in relation to systolic orthostatic blood pressure regulation (OBPR). The extent to which SBP increases in response to standing provides an index for predicting cognitive functioning. Developmental cognitive screening tests (Speed-DIAL-III) were administered individually. At a separate time, blood pressure regulation was assessed in response to an orthostatic challenge. After controlling for age and gender, adequate effective SBP regulation was found to predict performance on measures of concept skills and language competency. Findings support previous research and suggest an association between effective blood pressure regulation and cognitive performance among 3–5-year-old children.
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Casavant et al. (2010) studied this question.
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