New research links socioeconomic status to deleterious brain changes.
We often attribute financial problems to poor life decisions. Why didn't this person go to college? Why didn't he choose a more lucrative career? Why does he have so many children? But recent research has shown that low incomes negatively affect thinking and memory. In the course of recent scientific work, scientists have found a connection between a low position on the socio-economic ladder and changes in the brain.
The results of this work were published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers at the Center for Longevity at the University of Texas at Dallas scanned the brains of 304 people between the ages of 20 and 89. In doing so, scientists were looking for two things. First, they wanted to know how much gray matter their patients had in their brains. Second, how their brain networks are organized. Areas of the brain with interrelated functions often exhibit similar activity: for example, areas responsible for speech interact more with each other, and less with those areas that are responsible for various functions of the body. In general, this "segregation" is considered beneficial for brain networks.
The researchers then correlated these brain images with the subjects' educational level and with their careers. Together, this is called socioeconomic status. It turned out that among middle-aged people (35 to 64 years old), participants with a higher position had more gray matter and a higher degree of beneficial "segregation" in the brain networks. Both indicators are associated with better memory and are considered a protective measure against senile dementia and other signs of brain aging.
This relationship was traced even after scientists tested such issues as mental and physical health, cognitive ability and even socioeconomic status of the subjects in childhood, not just in adulthood. It turns out that the life of children in a rich or poor family does not affect their mental health in middle age. He is influenced by something from their adult life.
What is it? People with lower wages have less access to health care and healthy food. Sometimes they live in dirtier areas, or their intelligence is not very stimulating. The stress of being in the lower part of the socio-economic totem pole increases the allostatic load, as the level of nervous tension hormones is called, which wears out our body, including the brain.
“We're beginning to learn more about the effects of stress and lifelong learning on the brain,” said University of Texas neuroscientist Gagan Wig, who co-authored the study. "And it fits with the idea that life experiences can influence the health and wellness of the brain."
Previous research has also indicated that low socioeconomic status affects our way of thinking. In 2013, Science magazine published a paper that concluded that "human cognitive function is impaired by constant and all-consuming attempts to cope with chronic lack of money, when it is necessary to cut costs and save to pay bills." The study authors concluded that the cognitive costs of poverty are almost comparable to one sleepless night. Last year, another study was conducted on this topic, the authors of which found that people living in poverty performed worse than those who were wealthy on tests for verbal memory, speed of operations and executive functioning.
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"I think this study (in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) builds on past work on cognition and poverty," said University of British Columbia psychologist Jiaying Zhao, who authored the 2013 study. shows how chronic poverty can affect the anatomy of the brain. This work presents neural evidence."
In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the samples did not prove the relationship between socioeconomic status and brain performance in people of very young age (20 to 34 years old), as well as in the very elderly (over 64 years old) … Perhaps only the healthiest people from groups with low socioeconomic status survived to old age. Or, by the time a person reaches 70-80 years of age, the socio-economic situation for the health of his brain is no longer as important as the biological aging process. In addition, very few people living below the poverty line were included in the study, although in previous studies they were given serious attention.
But collectively, all of these studies suggest that poverty (or at least lack of wealth) can be partly self-renewing. People with fewer funds are in a constant struggle to make ends meet. They are stressed, they have poorer memory, and they perform less well on the cognitive tasks that lead to increased wealth in our information economy today.
Zhao put it this way in a 2013 study: “Previously, personal failures and failures were blamed on poverty, as well as an environment that was not conducive to success in life. We argue that a lack of funds alone can lead to weakening of cognitive functions. Poverty can be caused by the very situation of a person when he does not have enough funds."
Olga Khazan (OLGA KHAZAN)