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Title: Study: Poor children have smaller brains than wealthy peers
Source:
Yahoo Finance
URL Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/study ... n-wealthy-peers-204438119.html
Published: Apr 28, 2015
Author: Mandi Woodruff
Post Date: 2015-04-28 16:58:02 by Hondo68
Keywords: neocortex is thinner, less than $25,000 annually, 6% smaller in surface area
Views: 2299
Comments: 5
Thinkstock New research shows that low-income kids may be lagging behind their peers because a crucial part of their brains is underdeveloped. Researchers from MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research compared the brains of affluent 12- and 13-year-olds to the brains of less affluent peers. They found that one particular area of the brain — the neocortex, which plays a key role in memory and learning ability — is thinner in children from lower-income households. This is an important part of the brain for young students, who are often tested based on their ability to recall large chunks of information. Children who had a thinner neocortex performed poorly on standardized tests, researchers found. More than 90% of high-income students scored above average on a statewide math and English/Language Arts standardized test, compared to less than 60% of low-income students. Differences in cortical thickness could account for almost half of the income-achievement gap in this sample, researchers wrote, mostly because the neocortex plays such a crucial role in performance on math and language arts exams. “Just as you would expect, there’s a real cost to not living in a supportive environment. We can see it not only in test scores, in educational attainment, but within the brains of these children,” says psychological scientist John Gabrieli, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and one of the study’s authors. Differences in how children succeed academically have long been studied, but mostly through the lens of racial impact. Since a 2011 study published by Stanford University professor Sean Reardon found that the gap between standardized test scores of affluent and low-income students has grown by about 40% since the 1960s, there’s been a lot more research aimed at finding links between income and achievement, rather than race alone. The MIT study found low-income children were equally likely to have a thinner neocortex, no matter their race. Gabrieli and his co-authors can’t say exactly why poor children’s brains develop differently because there are too many possibilities to count. Everything from nutrition, health care, early education, stress levels, and quality of schools can impact a child’s learning ability and brain development. Their findings do, however, underline the importance of early intervention to ensure that low-income kids get the tools they need to succeed. “We know a lot from research and with certainty that the brain is highly plastic at all ages,” he says. “This is all the more reason to promote things in schools and within communities that will nurture these brains. And maybe [brain scans] can give you some way to monitor whether programs that are meant to support children are making those differences rather than waiting many years for those outcomes.” The MIT study comes a few weeks after a similar one by Stanford University researchers found that children from low-income backgrounds tend to have smaller brains, overall, than their wealthier peers. The brain of a child whose family earns less than $25,000 annually is 6% smaller in surface area than a child whose parents earned more than $150,000, according to the study, published in Nature Neuroscience. The MIT study, “Neuroanatomical Correlates of the Income-Achievement Gap,” is published in the Association for Psychological Science.
Poster Comment: The scientific explanation for why Hillary and Rafael Cruz are pea-brains.
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#1. To: hondo68 (#0)
Children from low-income backgrounds tend to have smaller brains because their parents have smaller brains. That's why they're low income. An IQ of 100 is the mean. For every 10,000 people with an IQ of 90, there are 10,000 people with an IQ of 110. That's simply a fact of life. No matter what you do with these kids or what you don't do, an IQ of 100 will still be the mean, and for every 10,000 people with an IQ of 90, there will still be 10,000 people with an IQ of 110. Same thing with "poverty". No matter what we do, there are still people in poverty. Gosh. We spent trillions of dollars on the War on Poverty and we still have poverty.
Trillions! Must be a very profitable plantation. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/books/review/manson-a-biography-by-jeff-guinn.html Ooops. How'd that happen - did Charlie's brain get bigger?
One of life's mysteries that I couldn't care less about.
#5. To: misterwhite (#3)
Is your brain smaller than Charlie's or about the same size?
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest"The MIT study comes a few weeks after a similar one by Stanford University researchers found that children from low-income backgrounds tend to have smaller brains, overall, than their wealthier peers."
#2. To: misterwhite (#1)
We spent trillions of dollars on the War on Poverty and we still have poverty.
"[Charles] Manson scored 109 on one prison I.Q. test, when he was 16, and 121 on another a few years later [in prison]. The first result is slightly above average; the second is said to be in the “high normal” range."
#3. To: VxH (#2)
"Ooops. How'd that happen"
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