The Effects of Poverty on Childhood Brain Development: The Mediating Effect of Caregiving and Stressful Life Events

By J. Luby, Andy C. Belden, K. Botteron, Natasha Marrus, M. Harms, Casey M. Babb, T. Nishino, Deanna M. Barch. JAMA pediatrics, 2013

740 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Importance The study provides novel data to inform the mechanisms by which poverty negatively impacts childhood brain development. Objective To investigate whether income to needs ratio experienced in early childhood impacts brain development at school age and to explore the mediators of this effect. Design Data from a prospective longitudinal study of emotion development in preschool children who participated in neuroimaging at school age were used to investigate the effects of poverty on brain development. Children were assessed annually for 3-6 years prior to the time of a MRI scan during which they were evaluated on psychosocial, behavioral and other developmental dimensions. Setting An academic research unit at the Washington University School of Medicine. Participants Preschoolers 3- 6 years of age were ascertained from primary care and day care sites in the St. Louis metropolitan area and annually assessed behaviorally for 5-10 years. Healthy preschoolers and those with clinical symptoms of depression participated in neuroimaging at school age/early adolescence. Main Outcome Measure(s) The main outcomes of interest were brain volumes of children's white matter and cortical gray matter as well as hippocampus and amygdala obtained using MRI. Mediators of interest were caregiver support/hostility measured observationally during the preschool period and stressful life events measured prospectively. Results Poverty was associated with smaller white and cortical gray matter and hippocampal and amygdala volumes. The effects of poverty on hippocampal volume were mediated by caregiving support/hostility on the left and right as well as stressful life events on the left. Conclusions and Relevance The findings that exposure to poverty in early childhood materially impacts brain development at school age further underscores the importance of attention to the well established deleterious effects of poverty on child development. Findings that these effects on the hippocampus are mediated by caregiving and stressful life events suggest that attempts to enhance early caregiving should be a focused public health target for prevention and early intervention. Findings substantiate the behavioral literature on the negative effects of poverty on child development and provide new data confirming that effects extend to brain development. Mechanisms for these effects on the hippocampus are suggested to inform intervention.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Education, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4d12281a82da7464634eb6c81b82ad6075b42f9b

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In Clinical Psychology

In Education

In Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health

Elizabeth A. Shirtcliff

Citations in the corpus

Behavior Problems After Early Life Stress: Contributions of the Hippocampus and Amygdala (2014, background): “Child poverty has been associated with larger (46) as well as smaller (47) amygdalae.”