IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0042486.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Influence of Socioeconomic Status on Children’s Brain Structure

Author

Listed:
  • Katarzyna Jednoróg
  • Irene Altarelli
  • Karla Monzalvo
  • Joel Fluss
  • Jessica Dubois
  • Catherine Billard
  • Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz
  • Franck Ramus

Abstract

Children’s cognitive abilities and school achievements are deeply affected by parental socioeconomic status (SES). Numerous studies have reported lower cognitive performance in relation to unfavorable environments, but little is known about the effects of SES on the child’s neural structures. Here, we systematically explore the association between SES and brain anatomy through MRI in a group of 23 healthy 10-year-old children with a wide range of parental SES. We confirm behaviorally that language is one of the cognitive domains most affected by SES. Furthermore, we observe widespread modifications in children’s brain structure. A lower SES is associated with smaller volumes of gray matter in bilateral hippocampi, middle temporal gyri, left fusiform and right inferior occipito-temporal gyri, according to both volume- and surface-based morphometry. Moreover, we identify local gyrification effects in anterior frontal regions, supportive of a potential developmental lag in lower SES children. In contrast, we found no significant association between SES and white matter architecture. These findings point to the potential neural mediators of the link between unfavourable environmental conditions and cognitive skills.

Suggested Citation

  • Katarzyna Jednoróg & Irene Altarelli & Karla Monzalvo & Joel Fluss & Jessica Dubois & Catherine Billard & Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz & Franck Ramus, 2012. "The Influence of Socioeconomic Status on Children’s Brain Structure," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(8), pages 1-9, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0042486
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0042486
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0042486
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0042486&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0042486?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jamie L Hanson & Amitabh Chandra & Barbara L Wolfe & Seth D Pollak, 2011. "Association between Income and the Hippocampus," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(5), pages 1-8, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Edouard Gentaz & Liliane Sprenger-Charolles & Anne Theurel & Pascale Colé, 2013. "Reading Comprehension in a Large Cohort of French First Graders from Low Socio-Economic Status Families: A 7-Month Longitudinal Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(11), pages 1-9, November.
    2. Luca Ronfani & Liza Vecchi Brumatti & Marika Mariuz & Veronica Tognin & Maura Bin & Valentina Ferluga & Alessandra Knowles & Marcella Montico & Fabio Barbone, 2015. "The Complex Interaction between Home Environment, Socioeconomic Status, Maternal IQ and Early Child Neurocognitive Development: A Multivariate Analysis of Data Collected in a Newborn Cohort Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-13, May.
    3. Seth Pollak & Barbara L. Wolfe, 2020. "How Developmental Neuroscience Can Help Address the Problem of Child Poverty," NBER Working Papers 26842, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matthew W. Hughey & W. Carson Byrd, 2015. "Beautiful Melodies Telling Me Terrible Things," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 661(1), pages 238-258, September.
    2. Gwendolyn M Lawson & Joshua S Camins & Laura Wisse & Jue Wu & Jeffrey T Duda & Philip A Cook & James C Gee & Martha J Farah, 2017. "Childhood socioeconomic status and childhood maltreatment: Distinct associations with brain structure," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(4), pages 1-16, April.
    3. Danielle Shaked & Zachary B Millman & Danielle L Beatty Moody & William F Rosenberger & Hui Shao & Leslie I Katzel & Christos Davatzikos & Rao P Gullapalli & Stephen L Seliger & Guray Erus & Michele K, 2019. "Sociodemographic disparities in corticolimbic structures," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-21, May.
    4. Zhang, Zhenmei & Liu, Hui & Choi, Seung-won, 2020. "Early-life socioeconomic status, adolescent cognitive ability, and cognition in late midlife: Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 244(C).
    5. Freund, Richard & Favara, Marta & Porter, Catherine & Behrman, Jere R., 2022. "Social Protection and Foundational Cognitive Skills during Adolescence: Evidence from a Large Public Works Programme," IZA Discussion Papers 15551, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Øystein Sørensen & Anders M. Fjell & Kristine B. Walhovd, 2023. "Longitudinal Modeling of Age-Dependent Latent Traits with Generalized Additive Latent and Mixed Models," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 88(2), pages 456-486, June.
    7. Wenjing Yan & Linting Zhang & Wenjie Li & Feng Kong, 2022. "How is Subjective Family Socioeconomic Status Related to Life Satisfaction in Chinese Adolescents? The Mediating Role of Resilience, Self-Esteem and Hope," Child Indicators Research, Springer;The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI), vol. 15(5), pages 1565-1581, October.
    8. Seth Pollak & Barbara L. Wolfe, 2020. "How Developmental Neuroscience Can Help Address the Problem of Child Poverty," NBER Working Papers 26842, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Philip N. Cohen, 2015. "How Troubling Is Our Inheritance? A Review of Genetics and Race in the Social Sciences," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 661(1), pages 65-84, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0042486. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.