Brain Development and Poverty by Megan Strom

In order to live a healthy, functional life, we need to ensure proper brain development.  What a lot of us don’t realize is that the majority of us take healthy brain development for granted—we think that it is something that occurs naturally.  However, brain development is something that takes a lot of nourishment including physical, mental, and emotional well-being.   Infants, children, and adults may not get the amount of physical, mental, educational, and emotional support that they need in order for their brain to grow properly.  Most of our resources and funding are going to fixing the external effects that poverty cause; however, we are doing little to understand the internal, cognitive effects that poverty may cause.  Through this post, I argue that those who grow up in poverty do not have access to the means to encourage healthy brain development.  Therefore, their brains are altered in a way that decreases functionality.

            When children grow up in poverty stricken areas, they are at risk for a variety of different problems which can include important aspects including schooling and health (Hanson et al., 2013).  These children are also often exposed to stress, violence, and family conflict. These are issues that we commonly associate with a life ridden with poverty, but what we often do not recognize tis that children living in addition to the previously stated issues, also suffer from a lack of cognitive stimulation.  In fact, one study showed that “an increase in family income raised children’s cognitive outcomes by 6%” (Hanson et al., 2013).  Because we can see that poverty affects the amount of cognitive stimulation that a child experiences, the next step would be to see how poverty affects cognition.  Children who grow up in poverty have decreased cognition, therefore, it is suggested that poverty has an effect on how the brain develops.  

            Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are one of the first organizations to outlines a neurobiological mechanism that shows that poverty is associated with developmental defects in children (“Poverty Linked” 2014).  Children involved in this study participated in neuroimaging and evaluated on numerous aspects of daily functioning and then were measured for the volume of their total grey and white matter in their brains. (“Poverty Linked”, 2014).  The children that were tested who lived in poverty were more likely to have “smaller brain volume in terms of white and cortical gray matter, hippocampus, and amygdala” (“Poverty Linked”, 2014).  This study implies that a reasonable economic status, parental support, as well as educational support are vital in terms of developing a healthy, functioning brain.   Parental support and support given by preschool programs may help these children improve their hippocampal volume.

            The article titled “Family Poverty Affects the Rate of Human Infant Brain Growth” also looked at the effects that low-social standing has on the developing brain, however, this group of researchers decided to look at even earlier developmental stages to find poverty’s effects on  the infant brain.  Researchers analyzed MRI scans of young children between the ages of five months—4 years (Hanson et al., 2013).  These researchers chose this particular age group in order to observe the changes in the brain as the children begin to realize and experience the effects that poverty has on their lives (Hanson et al., 2013).   Grey, white, and cerebral volumes and frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital lobe volumes were examined through the MRI screenings.  The biggest differences that were seen between infants who live in poverty and infants who did not live in poverty is that the babies who lived in poverty had lower volumes of grey matter in both the frontal and parietal lobes (Hanson et al., 2013).  As a result, infants who had a lower grey matter volume were more likely to develop disruptive behavioral issues (Hanson et al., 2013).   This study supports the findings of the Washington University study, supporting the evidence that poverty not only effects behaviors and emotions, but the development of the brain as well.

            Most of the research on the effects of poverty on brain development has been done on small children.  However, researchers at the Centre for Mental Health Research at the Australian National University sought to examine brain effects of poverty on middle-aged adults.  The adults that were included in this study had either been exposed to poverty in childhood or currently or not experienced financial hardship.  MRI tests were also used in this experiment along with he Personality and Total Health (PATH) survey which measures overall well-being (Butterworth, Cherbuin, Sachdev, Anstey, 2012).  The results of this study showed that the adults who had experienced financial hardship at some point in their lives had smaller left and right hippocampal and amygdalar volumes than those who had not experienced poverty (Butterworth, et al).  This study supports the view that financial hardship influences the hippocampus and amygdala volume (Butterwoth et al., 2012).  We often focus our attention and resources to help children in financial hardship, but a lot of the time, we fail to help adults who suffer from poverty. This study shows that adults can be just as affected by poverty as children can.  Poverty is damaging to the brain no matter the age.

            I know that I have been citing a lot of psychological research studies in this post and therefore, I thought you might want to see a different discipline’s opinion and research on the topic of poverty and brain development.  Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science in the UK authors an article titled, “Mind the Gap… in Intelligence: Re-examining the Relationship between Inequality and Health”.  In this article Kanazawa argues although economic development has little effect on life expectancy, it does have an effect on self-reported health.  Kanazawa analyzed data from a variety of sources including United Nations and the World Bank (Kanazawa, 2006).  The data that he collected showed that the national IQ does have a significant effect on the measures of health of the country (Kanazawa, 2006).  Even though this data does not directly show how poverty affects the brain, it does show the outcomes of this phenomenon.  There were no direct MRI tests or life surveys done in this study. Instead, the author chose to look at macro-level data which showed that a higher IQ is related to lower health risks.

            The purpose of this post is to show that poverty not only effects outward, external aspects of life including finances, living arrangements, food, water, etc., but it also effects inward, cognitive aspects of life.  Several studies have been done that suggests that poverty can affect infant, child, and adult brains—specifically the hippocampus, amygdala, and grey matter.  All three of these parts of the brain are crucial for healthy cognitive functioning.  Grey matter is packed with cell bodies and dendrites which send axons through the spinal cord.  The hippocampus is critical for storing memories and can affect mood, stress, sleep, and depression.  The amygdala purposes to regulate emotion and attributes to anxiety, fear, and the strength of emotion.  These three parts of the brain are crucial to proper brain functioning and are also crucial for everyday feelings and emotions.  In order for a person to have a healthy sized hippocampus, amygdala, and grey matter, he or she needs to experience physical, emotional, cognitive, and educational support.  All these types of support systems help to increase the volume of the parts of the brain, which in turn, helps a person become cognitively healthy.

References

Butterworth, P., Cherbuin, N., Sachdev, P., & Anstey, K. J. (2012). The association between financial hardship and amygdala and hippocampal volumes: results from the PATH through life project. Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, 7(5), 548-556.

Hanson, J. L., Hair, N., Shen, D. G., Shi, F., Gilmore, J. H., Wolfe, B. L., & Pollak, S. D. (2013). Family Poverty Affects the Rate of Human Infant Brain Growth. Plos ONE, 8(12), 1-9. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0080954

Kanazawa, S. (2006). Mind the gap…in intelligence: Re-examining the relationship between inequality and health. British Journal Of Health Psychology, 11(4), 623-642.

Poverty linked to reduced brain development. (2014). Brown University Child & Adolescent Psychopharmacology Update, 16(1), 3-4.