Poverty in kids assoc with decreased brain volume
We seem to be marching forward to trimming the social safety net for people below the Federal poverty level, decreasing their access to adequate food, housing, and medical care. In this light, there was a really important article showing that children in lower income families without necessary social benefits have reduced hippocampal volume in the brain as well as higher internalizing psychopathology. of note, increased access to cash benefits pretty dramatically decreased these disparities (see poverty adol brain changes NatureCommun2023 in dropbox, or doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37778-1) Details : -- data were from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study of 10,633 youths aged 9-11 (5115 female) across 21 sites in 17 states in the US -- ABCD includes lots of self-reported behavioral data as well as neuroimaging findings to assess brain development -- the researchers evaluated several macrostructural characte...