A new JAMA Network Open study of 280 mothers and their newborns found that prenatal exposure to maternal social disadvantage—defined by factors including health insurance status, highest educational level, Area Deprivation Index, and Healthy Eating Index—is associated with a reduction in neonatal brain volumes and reduced cortical folding at birth. 

“Results highlight that associations between poverty and brain development begin in utero and are evident early in life. These findings emphasize that preventive interventions that support fetal brain development should address parental socioeconomic hardships,” wrote first author Regina L. Triplett, MD, MS, a pediatric neurology resident at Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues.

The study used neonatal brain MRIs to measure total cortical and subcortical gray matter, white matter, cerebellum, and right and left hippocampi and amygdalae in the first weeks of life. 

All MRIs were performed during natural sleep, without sedation, and all infants examined were healthy, term-born infants who were born before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Analysis of the measurements found that maternal social disadvantage explained 7% of the variance in white matter volume, 2.6% of the variance in subcortical gray matter volume, and 1.6% of the variance in cortical gray matter volume.