http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/02/how-poverty-affects-brains-493239.html
For years I've been hearing people proclaim it's the parents fault or they just need to work harder, but this would seem to point to more than just desire and work ethic. As we get less and less income equal, it would seem the impact can be far more damaging than previously known.
Early results show a troubling trend: Kids who grow up with higher levels of violence as a backdrop in their lives, based on MRI scans, have weaker real-time neural connections and interaction in parts of the brain involved in awareness, judgment, and ethical and emotional processing.
<img src="http://s.newsweek.com/sites/www.newsweek.com/files/styles/full/public/2016/08/22/0902poverty02.jpg" width="800">
MRIs done years apart show that children raised in violent neighborhoods have progressively weaker neural connections and less interaction in parts of the brain associated with judgment and ethical processing.
GREGOR SCHUSTER/GETTY
Immordino-Yang’s work is contributing to a growing field called the neuroscience of poverty. Though it’s still largely based on correlations between brain patterns and particular environments, the research points to a disturbing conclusion: Poverty and the conditions that often accompany it—violence, excessive noise, chaos at home, pollution, malnutrition, abuse and parents without jobs—can affect the interactions, formation and pruning of connections in the young brain.
For years I've been hearing people proclaim it's the parents fault or they just need to work harder, but this would seem to point to more than just desire and work ethic. As we get less and less income equal, it would seem the impact can be far more damaging than previously known.