UMass Chan Medical School Faculty Publications

Title

Family income, parental education and brain structure in children and adolescents

UMMS Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry

Publication Date

2015-05-01

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Medicine and Health | Nervous System | Neuroscience and Neurobiology

Abstract

Socioeconomic disparities are associated with differences in cognitive development. The extent to which this translates to disparities in brain structure is unclear. We investigated relationships between socioeconomic factors and brain morphometry, independently of genetic ancestry, among a cohort of 1,099 typically developing individuals between 3 and 20 years of age. Income was logarithmically associated with brain surface area. Among children from lower income families, small differences in income were associated with relatively large differences in surface area, whereas, among children from higher income families, similar income increments were associated with smaller differences in surface area. These relationships were most prominent in regions supporting language, reading, executive functions and spatial skills; surface area mediated socioeconomic differences in certain neurocognitive abilities. These data imply that income relates most strongly to brain structure among the most disadvantaged children.

DOI of Published Version

10.1038/nn.3983

Source

Nat Neurosci. 2015 May;18(5):773-8. doi: 10.1038/nn.3983. Epub 2015 Mar 30. Link to article on publisher's site

Comments

Full author list omitted for brevity. For full list of authors see article.

Related Resources

Link to Article in PubMed

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Nature neuroscience

PubMed ID

25821911

Link to Full Text

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