Link found between social status and brain structure

The structure of adults’ brains may be affected and changed by the individual’s socio-economic status, new research has found.

Previous studies have demonstrated that a developing child’s “brain function can be adversely affected when the child is raised in an environment lacking adequate education, nutrition and access to healthcare”, reports Eureka Alert. The new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, is the first to look at the effects of these factors on the adult brain.

"We know that socioeconomic status (SES) influences the structure of the brain in childhood and older age, but there’s been a gap in the research,” said Dr Gagan Wig, who co-authored the paper. “We wanted to see if there were relationships between SES and the brain across a wider range of adulthood.”

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The scientists, from the University of Texas at Dallas, looked at the brains of around 300 adults between the ages of 20 and 90. Each individual’s socio-economic status was approximated using methods that “combine education and a measure of occupational prestige”. The networks and thickness of cortical grey matter in their brains was also examined using MRI scans.

The researchers found that among the middle-aged subjects, those with higher “status” had networks that were more efficiently organised, and their cortical grey matter was thicker, The Independent reports. Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tended to have a thinner cortex, which is associated with problems later in life including memory loss and dementia.

Dr Wig said: “What makes these results more striking is that the individuals we studied were predominantly above the poverty line. This provides evidence that socio-economic status-brain relationships are not limited to individuals at the extreme ends of socio-economic status, but are present across a broader socio-economic status range.”