Childhood Poverty and the Organization of Structural Brain Connectome

Publication Date

1-1-2019

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Poverty, Connectome, Income-to-needs ratio, Sex differences, Brain development

Abstract

Socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with atypical development in specific brain regions, yet the relation between poverty and whole brain network organization (i.e., the connectome, a set of brain regions connected with neuronal pathways) has not been characterized. Developmental studies indicate that the connectome undergoes rapid change during childhood and is consequently likely to be highly sensitive to both salutary and detrimental influences. We investigated associations between the socioeconomic disparities measured by the income-to-needs ratio (INR) in childhood and structural brain network organization with 144 healthy children between 6 and 11 years of age (mean age = 8 years). INR of girls was positively and logarithmically associated with the extent to which brain networks were efficiently organized, suggesting that girls in more impoverished environments had less efficient brain network organization. Lower INR was associated with network inefficiency in multiple cortical regions including prefrontal cortex, cingulate, and insula, and in subcortical regions including the hippocampus and amygdala. These findings suggest that childhood poverty may result in wide-spread disruptions of the brain connectome among girls, particularly at the lowest INR levels, and are differentially expressed in females and males.

Copyright Date

9-22-2018

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Rights Holder

Elsevier Inc.

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Elsevier Inc. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Kim, D-J., Davis, E. P., Sandman, C. A., Glynn, L., Sporns, O., O'Donnell, B. F., & Hetrick, W. P. (2019). Childhood poverty and the organization of structural brain connectome. NeuroImage, 184, 409-416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.09.041

Publication Title

NeuroImage

Volume

184

First Page

409

Last Page

416

ISSN

1095-9572

PubMed ID

30237035

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