Abstract
Living in poverty places children at very high risk for problems across a variety of domains, including schooling, behavioral regulation, and health. Aspects of cognitive functioning, such as information processing, may underlie these kinds of problems. How might poverty affect the brain functions underlying these cognitive processes? Here, we address this question by observing and analyzing repeated measures of brain development of young children between five months and four years of age from economically diverse backgrounds (n = 77). In doing so, we have the opportunity to observe changes in brain growth as children begin to experience the effects of poverty. These children underwent MRI scanning, with subjects completing between 1 and 7 scans longitudinally. Two hundred and three MRI scans were divided into different tissue types using a novel image processing algorithm specifically designed to analyze brain data from young infants. Total gray, white, and cerebral (summation of total gray and white matter) volumes were examined along with volumes of the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes. Infants from low-income families had lower volumes of gray matter, tissue critical for processing of information and execution of actions. These differences were found for both the frontal and parietal lobes. No differences were detected in white matter, temporal lobe volumes, or occipital lobe volumes. In addition, differences in brain growth were found to vary with socioeconomic status (SES), with children from lower-income households having slower trajectories of growth during infancy and early childhood. Volumetric differences were associated with the emergence of disruptive behavioral problems.
Figure 2. This figure shows total gray matter volume for group by age. |
These results extend a consistent literature in rodents, non-human
primates, and humans suggesting that early environments marked by stress
or deprivation negatively influence brain development [65]–[69].
This emerging body of research has found differences in brain structure
in portions of the frontal lobe, which fits well with the analysis
presented here [68].
These findings suggest that aspects of low SES environments have
important functional implications for children’s health and adaptation [70],
perhaps by influencing key features of central nervous system
development. In regards to neurobiological mechanisms, the differences
in volume we find are likely due to neuronal remodeling, rather than
birth of new neurons (or neurogenesis) [27], [71], [72].(…)
Candidate factors might include the effects of household resources,
environmental stimulation, crowding, exposure to pathogens and noise,
parental stress, and nutrition. It is also possible that pre-natal
experiences affect brain development and reflect other disadvantages and
risks related to poverty. Because humans are able to adapt to a range
of environmental conditions, we must understand more about the level at
which impoverished environments become toxic for children.
Conditions such as the variety and complexity of the stimuli in an
animal’s cage can influence different aspects of brain structure,
including the number of neurons, glial cells, myelination, dendrites,
synapses, and neurogenesis (for review, see Ref. [23]–[24]).