What happens when governments allow families with few resources? That they have children with a "brand" that makes them grow in inequality.
Inequality is not only the one seen, the obvious one of how you dress, where you live and who you rub shoulders with, but also, and the one that seems the same or more terrible, the one that is not seen, the one that affects to the development of babies and children. What am i talking about? Well, I'm talking about the conclusion a study has reached, which shows that poor children grow up with a smaller brain.
Blame the stress, poor diet and sadness
The fault of this happening is the environment in which a baby is born. Where there is stress, where children do not have adequate food and where sadness reigns, the nerves of not knowing how to get ahead, the depression of seeing that you do not progress and the difficulties to make your family thrive, children develop worse .
How much worse? Well, according to the study we discussed today, the size of the brain can become up to 6% smaller than that of children belonging to higher social strata.
Study Data
The study has been carried out in the US and has been carried out by neuroscientists Kimberly Noble, from Columbia University (New York) and Elizabeth Sowell, from the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles (California), among others. To carry it out, they studied 1,099 people between 3 and 20 years old, from families whose income ranged from less than € 4,500 to more than € 273,000 annually.
As in the US, the poorest people usually belong to minority ethnic groups studied the genetic basis of each person so that possible differences by ethnicity would not skew the final data (if people of Latin origin, for example, had a brain of their own smaller, and this was not taken into account in the data, the conclusion of the study would be wrong.
How did they study the brain of so many people? Well, doing an MRI in order to study the cortical surface of the brain, which is the area responsible for the development of language, memory and creativity and imagination. Since it is a part of the brain that increases in size during childhood and adolescence, they considered it a good indicator of possible differences based on social status.
As we read in La Vanguardia, Natalie Brito, one of the researchers, explains it this way:
A bad education, lack of stimulation or accompaniment in learning, or an unpleasant context such as a stressed environment and an unbalanced diet, are factors that undoubtedly have to do with poverty and restrict brain development.
The less, the greater the difference
In the study they saw that when there were few differences in disadvantaged families the difference was greater. That is, when families charged a few thousand euros more than the poorest the brain size was already much larger.
If this difference of a few thousand euros was in the upper class children, the brain size was not so large in comparison.
This is logical, because the brains are not empty containers that depend exclusively on the income of the parents, and between charging, for example, 200,000 euros a year and 250,000, the differences will be very not noticeable, because it probably affects very little in the education and lifestyle of children. However, the difference between charging 4,500 euros and 8,000 is obvious: they are only 3,500 euros more, but it is almost double the resources of the poorest family.
We saw it a few weeks ago on the blog
When less than a month ago we talked about how breast milk helps to develop children's brains correctly, we show you a graph that showed it and that, in addition, pointed out the differences according to social stratum.
In the Y (the numbers in vertical) we see the intellectual quotient of the population. In the x (horizontally) we see the time, in months, of breastfeeding. We saw that more time sucking, greater intellectual quotient, but we also saw, and that is what concerns us today, that there were some triangles (3rd), some squares (2nd) and some rhombuses (1st) that placed us in the graphic at people according to income. There, the differences were abysmal, because those who had more income (3rd) had an IQ always much higher than those who had less (1st).
The disadvantages are reversible
As the children and young people studied were at least 3 years old, we do not know if babies are already born with a smaller brain than others, although given the causes explained by the study authors, it seems that the most important thing is the lifestyle, the stimuli that you receive and the environment that "breathes". This makes, thankfully, these disadvantages are reversible and can be alleviated or even overcome If the child receives what he needs, if he begins to live in a different environment or if his direct environment changes in some way.
In the words of Houston:
The plasticity of the brain makes us think that, through increased attention to children or improvements in diet, brain differences can be reduced or eliminated.
Then come, we throw the ball to our governments because they are getting more and more poor people (and more poor children) while they continue to cut resources on education. Do you want an inept population? I do not have doubt.
Photos | Flickr, Thinkstock On Babies and more | The baby's brain, The baby's brain: how to help its correct development (I) and (II), Children's brains seem to grow longer the longer they are breastfed
