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A recent study claims that poverty affects brain development in children and this will damage their academic achievements in the future. Not only habits connected to childhood, priorities, less focusing in school and lessons that affect the brain of a child but biomedical issues are also responsible in the poor development of the child’s brain.
It is a known fact that poverty can be the cause of negative effects, emotional and psychological, and now scientists have discovered that the development of the brain may be impacted from the very beginning in young kids. The poor development of the brain may also prevent these children to achieve a greater lifestyle later in their lives.
Researchers analyzed about 400 MRI scans taken from the brains of children from poor families and looked at them closely and comparing them with the ways the grey matter develops in children coming from middle-class families. The grey matter inside the brain is important for numerous things, like emotions, decision making, memory, hearing, seeing and to some extent self-control. The white matter inside the brain is only responsible for transporting information from one place to another.
Grey matter is a crucial component in adults but a lot more important in the stages of development of children. The new research revealed that the people that come from poor families had 4% less grey matter. This means that even if life improves for these people and they will have better opportunities, they will still be at a disadvantage when compared to people coming from wealthier families.
The research showed that poverty is not just a social issue at this moment, a problem of family obligations and environment that could damage the academic achievements of a child, but an unjust biological weakness as well. Childhood poverty leaves marks on a child which linger on well into their adulthood, which translates into even more issues inside that person than into others coming from wealthier environments.
What is considered to have an impact on the development of grey matter are usually problems connected to poorer households, like parent influences, higher stress levels, improper nutrition and lack of stimulation, which are all influencing the development of the brain in a negative way.
The real question, however, is what could be done to stop this. About 22 percent of children in the US are living in poverty. This means that the problems regarding poor brain development and low achievements has moved from being an issue linked to teachers to a matter of trying to help these children out inside their own environment before becoming a real challenge for them.
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