Over the past 50 years, much of brain research has been devoted to studying the effects of an enriched environment, so greater social and intellectual stimulation has been found to produce structural and functional changes in the brain. Recently, they have begun to investigate what happens if they do not, so it has been observed that poverty also changes our brains.
Early studies were designed to test whether socioeconomic differences were reflected in behavior and cognition. Other studies have focused on locating different brain networks, functions and structures according to socioeconomic levels.
- Despite the latest findings.
- It is unclear how these differences occur.
- However.
- There is already enough evidence to say that poverty changes our brains and some mechanisms have been proposed to try to explain how this happens.
These results were mainly found in the child population, as the developing brain is more sensitive to external factors.
Brain development is driven by environmental and genetic factors, so the socioeconomic level can have a significant influence during this period.
Thus, it has been found that genetic burden in the development of brain structure and cognition is more important in people of high socioeconomic level, so in low-level people environmental characteristics may have a higher weight.
Language is one of the skills most related to the socioeconomic level of childhood, research has shown how lower socioeconomic-level children show less specialization of the areas of the brain involved in language, as well as a relationship between poverty and how they communicate.
In terms of memory, the poorest children have a smaller hippocampus, an effect that is also maintained up to 5 decades later, regardless of socioeconomic conditions in adulthood.
On the other hand, the amygdala is a brain structure linked to emotional processing, learning and motivation, in this sense children in greater poverty have a smaller size and altered activation in this area, which results in worse emotional regulation.
In executive functions (more complex cognitive processes, such as decision-making or planning), the lack of stimulation and resources also produces changes and deficits.
As in previous processes, lower socioeconomic levels are linked to worse executive performance and lower volume in the brain areas involved.
Most of the effects of poverty on adults are due to a lower socioeconomic level in childhood, however, some effects can also be found regardless of childhood.
For example, an interesting study published in the journal Science found that a simple financial concern affects cognitive performance, particularly executive function.
In the survey, participants were divided into two groups based on a single criterion: the difficulty of arithmetic operations. In the next step, the people in each group faced a situation of greater or lesser financial concern.
In the first condition both groups had similar results, on the other hand, in the most difficult conditions, people who were most afraid to have less money had worse results, that is, they showed a lower ability to inhibit inappropriate responses, select the corresponding answers, and retain relevant information.
While the mechanisms that operate to change poverty in our brains are not precisely known, there are several possible candidates for this list. These factors would act together, which would add negatively to the effect of each.
One way or another, the fight against poverty does not seem to be just a health problem, we see that this variable, as a generator of a context with very particular circumstances, can be an obstacle to our cognitive functioning.