Socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood linked to altered brain structure later in life, MRIs show
Socioeconomic disadvantages during childhood could have long lasting implications for brain structure later in life.
According to new MRI data, there are associations between being born into disadvantaged communities and decreased volume of multiple areas in the brain. What’s more, these findings hold true despite educational attainment and late-life income.
Although numerous studies have examined brain structures among disadvantaged individuals during adolescence and early adulthood, none have assessed whether these variations continue to be evident later in life. The research offers valuable new insights into how the environment children grow up in impacts lifelong brain health.
“This research is especially important in minoritized racial or ethnic groups for which dementia disparities have been documented,” corresponding author Rachel L. Peterson, PhD, MPH, with the School of Public & Community Health Sciences at University of Montana, and colleagues noted. “Residence in disadvantaged communities is not random but driven by historical and contemporary systems that concentrate low-income and minoritized populations in communities with fewer resources and more health-harming exposures.”
Most research on the subject has been conducted among white individuals, which limits the generalizability of the results. This latest research addressed prior those shortcomings by incorporating a racially and ethnically diverse sample derived from a regional integrated health network in California. All participants were 65 or older at the time of the study.
Of those who met eligibility criteria and underwent imaging, a little over 12% lived in a disadvantaged neighborhood during childhood. The average income among the group was between $55,000 to $99,000 annually, with the mean education being 15 years.
On imaging, those who reported living in a disadvantaged area displayed smaller gray matter in the cerebellum, hippocampus, and parietal cortex. They also showed larger lateral ventricle volume and greater white matter hyperintensity volume. Greater educational attainment and higher income later in life did account for any of the variations observed.
“Put simply, our findings suggest that the association of living in a disadvantaged community in childhood and late-life structural brain health is independent of childhood familial and adulthood individual socioeconomic status,” the authors noted.
The group suggested that things like greater exposure to environmental pollution and stressful or traumatic experiences, like high crime that is more common to disadvantaged areas, could help to explain their findings, as these things are known to be associated with structural brain variations.
The new data could be used to inform future public health policy intended to decrease health disparities, the group indicated.
“Expanding public health interventions targeting the early life social exposome may further prevent the emergence of risk factors for poor late-life brain health and reduce dementia disparities in the next generation,” the authors suggested, adding that future work should focus on alternative pathways, such as instances of cardiovascular disease, that could help to explain the late-life neural variations.
The research is published in JAMA.
In addition to her background in journalism, Hannah also has patient-facing experience in clinical settings, having spent more than 12 years working as a registered rad tech. She joined Innovate Healthcare in 2021 and has since put her unique expertise to use in her editorial role with Health Imaging.