Can Socioeconomic Conditions Influence Brain Development?

Can a person's financial and social conditions during their childhood influence the development of their brain? Science shows that it's possible. As we know, material wealth tends to be accompanied by social prestige and education. Thus, children who grow up in a favored socioeconomic environment have a higher quality of life and access to education, and suffer less negative impacts on their physical and mental health. There are some important effects on brain development suffered by this population. Mexican researchers observed a decrease in electroencephalographic activity in the prefrontal cortex of 4-year-old normal children with low socioeconomic status, indicating maturational delay in this area. The prefrontal cortex is a specific area of the brain responsible for executive control, that is, complex thinking, decision making, attention, memory, and personality expression that participate in the modulation of the individual's social behavior. In addition, imaging tests such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed less activation of the left fusiform gyrus (an essential area for visual recognition of words and learning to read) and less volume of the lower left frontal gyrus (area responsible for language ) in poor children.

In addition to the structural changes and brain activities, also occurs, as a consequence, an influence of socioeconomic status on neurocognitive performance. For example, some studies have shown that the average vocabulary size of 3-year-olds from middle / upper-class families is more than double the size of those children in the lower-class and can generate a language deficit in adult life . Something similar also happens with infants belonging to families of this class where some recent evidences has also reported that children under one year of age are less advanced in operational memory skills, which corresponds to the brain's ability to assimilate information as we perform certain tasks, when compared with socieconomically favored babies.

And what impacts can all this have on adult life? Deficits in executive functions, such as the difficulty in ignoring distracting information and focusing attention on task demands, and deficits in working memory and planning and a higher incidence of stress could be observed in adults who had a poor childhood. In addition, this population also presented less activity in regions such as the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate and thalamus, regions involved in emotional processing and social cognition.
Despite all this evidence, it is also important to remember that the neurocognitive development of the brain is also dependent on other non-socioeconomic factors, such as genetic and pathological factors involved. By studying social and economic factors within the framework of cognitive neuroscience, we have the potential to address social problems and broaden our understanding of the human brain. All of these issues addressed show how important it is to have well-established public policies to provide equal social development for all socioeconomic classes.

References:
 Hackman DA; Farah MJ. Socioeconomic status and the developing brain.Trends Cogn Sci. Doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.11.003
 Guinote A. Power affects basic cognition: increased attentional inhibition and flexibility. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 2007;43:685–697.
 Otero GA. Poverty, cultural disadvantage and brain development: a study of pre-school children in Mexico. Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol. 1997 Jun; 102(6):512-6.
 Mezzacappa E. .Alerting, orienting, and executive attention: developmental properties and sociodemographic correlates in an epidemiological sample of young, urban children. Child Dev. 2004 Sep-Oct; 75(5):1373-86.