How Poverty Affects the Brain (1 Viewer)

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http://www.newsweek.com/2016/09/02/how-poverty-affects-brains-493239.html

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&#8217;s work is contributing to a growing field called the neuroscience of poverty. Though it&#8217;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&#8212;violence, excessive noise, chaos at home, pollution, malnutrition, abuse and parents without jobs&#8212;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.
 
Then we should immediately remove kids from this dangerous and ultimately life threatening environment. No child should be in the home of a violent parent or where there excessive noise, a home filled with chaos or pollution.

Why are we allowing kids to be raised by people that would do this to their kids!!!
 
Then we should immediately remove kids from this dangerous and ultimately life threatening environment. No child should be in the home of a violent parent or where there excessive noise, a home filled with chaos or pollution.

Why are we allowing kids to be raised by people that would do this to their kids!!!

not helpful
 
Smart *** response to a very serious issue. There is more to it. The animal base of your brain learns and wires itself on how to react to stimuli by the time you are 2. If a child is neglected, abused or even witnesses it their brain is programmed for that response forever. The brain as its growing does wire itself to stimuli. If it's growing up creative, learning and safe to take chances, the brain will develop many more connections and be much more sound.

People wonder why Finland has gone from a disaster in education to top 5. It's easy. Finland realized that screwed up kids can't learn. So Finland has intensive counciling for new parents, dumps massive resources, family, child, care, you name it into their young to make sure the kids first years are set. They found out that when these kids enter school they are behaved, brains are ready to learn and be creative. It's not that they pay teachers more, it's that the kids brains are not ****** from birth.

This Finland way will never work here as people will never realize or accept that their way of raising children is screwed up.


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There's an environmental factor that is being grossly overlooked as well, I believe.
 
Childhood development is very much tied into playing with toys, exploring your surroundings, etc. I realized that when our younger child was way behind. What we came to understand is that the speech therapist and occupational therapist coming into our home to work with him, they weren't doing anything special. They were just playing with him, interacting, talking to him extensively.

And we're not poor by any means, but we realized we weren't spending the time because we just didn't have the time to spend. We were both working long days, getting very little sleep and not doing a good job of interacting during the day because as older parents we honestly just didn't have the energy to do more than the basics. So we scaled back our work hours, started making a conscious effort to spend more time and home and giving him more attention.

And it's been great....but yeah, you're gonna have an awful lot of people in worse financial shape that can't afford to take less hours because they can't afford it or their job won't allow it. And that's just talking about the problems that the productive members of society face, not those in truly disturbing circumstances.
 
There's an environmental factor that is being grossly overlooked as well, I believe.

Huh? The whole article is about how a childs environment growing up (with the emphasis on poverty) effects their brain wiring and chemistry. How exactly is the environmental factor being overlooked?
 
That's where we have to ask ourselves as a nation. Do we want a healthy, happy population or a violent drug using corporate slave mill? We spend more than any country on health care and get less but largest profits are in the US. We have the most powerful military ever and soldiers coming home and no money to care for them. We have people who are depressed because of situations, but our only solution is to drug them, not think for a second of quality of life. Our country is sick, and we have 2 idiots running for president that will do nothing but maintain status quo-Clinton, or expand core rate power and profits at the expense of the population-Trump. So what do we do?


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Huh? The whole article is about how a childs environment growing up (with the emphasis on poverty) effects their brain wiring and chemistry. How exactly is the environmental factor being overlooked?

Well there is no link provided to read the "entire article," only the snippet provided in the OP. The aspect that I am speaking of may be encompassed in the "pollution" part, but the article that I read regarding the same study focuses primarily on "violence" and "fear."

I contend that the issue is primarily pollutants, though, which while mentioned aren't discussed nearly as in-depth as the violence and fear factors.
 
Well there is no link provided to read the "entire article," only the snippet provided in the OP. The aspect that I am speaking of may be encompassed in the "pollution" part, but the article that I read regarding the same study focuses primarily on "violence" and "fear."



I contend that the issue is primarily pollutants, though, which while mentioned aren't discussed nearly as in-depth as the violence and fear factors.



No it's not. It's the violence, the fear, the lack of nutrition all plays a lot, way moe than pollution


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No it's not. It's the violence, the fear, the lack of nutrition all plays a lot, way moe than pollution


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That's awesome how you state your view on the matter as fact. It doesn't make it any more correct than what I am saying, though.

People in poverty tend to live in less than ideal conditions. Their exposure to lead alone can lead to the very same violence that is trickling down and creating problems. So even if you believe the violence is the primary cause then you can trace the violence back a step further to pollution.
 
Well there is no link provided to read the "entire article," only the snippet provided in the OP. The aspect that I am speaking of may be encompassed in the "pollution" part, but the article that I read regarding the same study focuses primarily on "violence" and "fear."

I contend that the issue is primarily pollutants, though, which while mentioned aren't discussed nearly as in-depth as the violence and fear factors.

Sorry, thought I'd included the link. I went back and edited to include. Very sorry bout that folks.
 
Smart *** response to a very serious issue. There is more to it. The animal base of your brain learns and wires itself on how to react to stimuli by the time you are 2. If a child is neglected, abused or even witnesses it their brain is programmed for that response forever. The brain as its growing does wire itself to stimuli. If it's growing up creative, learning and safe to take chances, the brain will develop many more connections and be much more sound.

People wonder why Finland has gone from a disaster in education to top 5. It's easy. Finland realized that screwed up kids can't learn. So Finland has intensive counciling for new parents, dumps massive resources, family, child, care, you name it into their young to make sure the kids first years are set. They found out that when these kids enter school they are behaved, brains are ready to learn and be creative. It's not that they pay teachers more, it's that the kids brains are not ****** from birth.

This Finland way will never work here as people will never realize or accept that their way of raising children is screwed up.


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You are absolutely correct about the bonded part. And we are too scared to do anything about it. In fact we encourage the same crappy behaviors. Unfit parents are pumping out kids and we just keep feeding the problem. By making excuses for them and throwing money at them. The solution is always to just throw more money at them.

So yes, we are now at the point that we need government from birth to wipe our kids butts and raise them.





Not knocking their system. Are you willing to pay the taxes they do? 24% sales tax
 
You are absolutely correct about the bonded part. And we are too scared to do anything about it. In fact we encourage the same crappy behaviors. Unfit parents are pumping out kids and we just keep feeding the problem. By making excuses for them and throwing money at them. The solution is always to just throw more money at them.

So yes, we are now at the point that we need government from birth to wipe our kids butts and raise them.





Not knocking their system. Are you willing to pay the taxes they do? 24% sales tax

if/when i feel like verbally peeing into a fan, i'll address this
 
You are absolutely correct about the bonded part. And we are too scared to do anything about it. In fact we encourage the same crappy behaviors. Unfit parents are pumping out kids and we just keep feeding the problem. By making excuses for them and throwing money at them. The solution is always to just throw more money at them.

So yes, we are now at the point that we need government from birth to wipe our kids butts and raise them.





Not knocking their system. Are you willing to pay the taxes they do? 24% sales tax


Can you link any scientific studies to support this accusation?

Otherwise this is just a rambling old guy scared of the kids on his lawn.
 

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