Poverty Changes Children's Brains

A new study out of the University of California-Berkeley claims that the difference between the brains of 9- and 10-year-old children living in poverty and those of their wealthy peers is almost equivalent to comparing brains that have suffered strokes to healthy brains.

This study adds to a growing body of research that finds key functions of the prefrontal cortex, like language development and the ability to plan, remember details, and pay attention, to be severely compromised in the brains of children living in poverty. These effects were found to be reversible through intensive interventions that focused on these deficient skills.

Experts say this study draws important attention to studying the effects of experience, in particular socioeconomic status, on a child's ability to perform academically.

Comments

[LisaRose]

How about instead of trying to staunch the hemorrhaging "through intensive interventions that focused on these deficient skills," that we actually address the root causes of the poverty to begin with? Perhaps then, we would not see brains in 9- and 10-year-old children equivalent to those who have suffered strokes.

Appalling.

[Mercedes]

The results of this study supports the theory that poverty begets poverty, and also helps to explain the incidence of huge populations of people across the world who can do nothing to improve their own situations.
In a technologically advanced and enlightened country such as the United States, it is unconscionable that any child should be deprived of those basic needs that can insure the growth and education of a healthy, productive citizen. The system must be changed.

[Bob]

Even countries in which poverty is rampant, I have seen a difference in ability, but it seems to be dependent on the amount of protein the children receive. In costal areas where they have fish available the children and adults have been able to learn more and quicker. Remediate poverty:yes. But focus on protein intake.

[Richard]

Forgive me. No doubt this will lead the Department of Education to announce a new Special High Intensity Teaching Program. It won't be funded, but lots of teachers will be required to take the program.

So maybe there is reason other than the teacher for the low scores in high poverty schools. How will the pundits on both the right and the left deal with this information. No more teacher whipping!!

[George]

Like many studies, this one raises more questions than it answers. What are the critical differences between children raised in poverty and children raised in affluence that impact brain development? Nutrition? Cognitive stimulation? Exposure to language? Emotional trauma? Social well-being? The security of having two loving parents?

I am reminded of the cognitive research of Reuven Feurstein as he worked with Jewish children traumatized by their experiences in concentration camps. He, too, developed an intensive program of cognitive interventions.

I would like to see more research that compared the various interventions developed to improve cognitive functioning. But I'm not holding my breath ... it seems all too common that such interventions are quickly packaged and marketed as commercial programs and the "research" becomes some sort of a sales pitch.

[Nadine]

Readers might be interested in the document found at this link that outlines "the need for a new federal policy" on education. It looks at the federal role in education and specifically tackles the inequities in resources and funding that ensure equal access to learning for children of poverty.

[Nadine]

http://www.forumforeducation.org/resources/index.php?item=427&page=32

[Jan]

This research adds additional fuel to the nature versus nurture debate but on the side of environment. There are so many variables that come into play in the physiological and psychosocial development of children both in and out of poverty that an intervention that attempts to focus on just one or two will be doomed to failure. Parental education levels is an oft cited variable about which we as educators can do nothing. Neighborhood health and safety issues are additional variable over which educators have little or no control. As long as we treat the classroom as a magic world away from reality high poverty children and their subsequent progeny will continue to fall farther and farther behind in the global race for competence.

[James E. Mac Shane]

If the educational goal is the intellectual development of all children's natural abilities it needs to begin when consciousness begins. Scientifically formal education naturally becomes appropriate at that point in human intellectual development. Scientifically it is now understood that the human development of unconscious to beginning consciousness takes place on average in the time span of 2 1/2 to 3 years of age.

The K-12 system has only historic precedence as its base as the beginning of formal education at the age of six. The child's environmental experience up to that time when it is intellectually negative creates therapeutic consequences such as the poverty environment.

This educational goal is gradually becoming a part of our collective educational consciousness. The creation of a positive natural educational environment at this stage of natural intellectual development needs to be understood as the goal to over come any negative aspect of the informal education environment.

[M Kadyakapita, Malawi]

Question:
What is the interpretation of poverty in this case, i.e. who is poor and who is wealthy?
Protein intake - really? I've not observed a remarkable difference between the thinking/problem solving ability of children along the lakeshore or river banks where fish are available and those from anywhere else. More research please!