DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Poverty and The Brain

The brain’s foundation, frame, and walls are built in the womb. As an embryo grows into a fetus, some of its dividing cells turn into neurons, arranging themselves into layers and forming the first synapses, the organ’s electrical wiring. Four or five months into gestation, the brain’s outermost layer, the cerebral cortex, begins to develop its characteristic wrinkles, which deepen further after birth. It isn’t until a child’s infant and toddler years that the structures underlying higher-level cognition—will power, emotional self-control, decision-making—begin to flourish; some of them continue to be fine-tuned throughout adolescence and into the first decade of adulthood.

Pat Levitt, a developmental neuroscientist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, has spent much of his career studying the setbacks and accidents that can make this construction process go awry. In the nineteen-nineties, during the media panic over “crack babies,” he was among a number of scientists who questioned whether the danger of cocaine exposure in utero was being overstated. (Levitt spent two decades examining the brains of rabbit mothers and their offspring that were dosed with the drug, and says that the alarm was “an exaggeration.”) More recently, as the science director of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, he has become interested in another sort of neurotoxin: poverty.

As it turns out, the conditions that attend poverty—what a National Scientific Council report summarized as “overcrowding, noise, substandard housing, separation from parent(s), exposure to violence, family turmoil,” and other forms of extreme stress—can be toxic to the developing brain, just like drug or alcohol abuse. These conditions provoke the body to release hormones such as cortisol, which is produced in the adrenal cortex. Brief bursts of cortisol can help a person manage difficult situations, but high stress over the long term can be disastrous. In a pregnant woman, the hormone can “get through the placenta into the fetus,” Levitt told me, potentially influencing her baby’s brain and tampering with its circuitry. Later, as the same child grows up, cortisol from his own body may continue to sabotage the development of his brain.

In March, in the journal Nature Neuroscience, a group of researchers from nine hospitals and universities published a major study of more than a thousand children. They took DNA samples, made MRI scans of the children’s brains, collected data on their families’ income level and educational background, and gave them a series of tests for skills like reading and memory. The DNA samples allowed the scientists to factor out the influence of genetic heritage and look more closely at how socioeconomic status affects a growing brain. The scans focussed on over-all brain surface area, determined partly from the depth of the folds on the cortex, and the size of the hippocampus, a lumpy, curled structure nestled in the middle of the brain that stores memories. As might be expected, more educated families produced children with greater brain surface area and a more voluminous hippocampus. But income had its own distinct effect: living in the lowest bracket left children with up to six per cent less brain surface area than children from high-income families. At the lowest end of the income spectrum, little increases in family earnings could mean larger differences in the brain. At the middle and upper income levels, though, the money-brain curve flattened. In other words, wealth can’t necessarily buy a better brain, but deprivation can result in a weakened one.

A person whose brain has been undermined in this way can suffer long-term behavioral and cognitive difficulties. In March, a study appeared in the journal Acta Paediatrica showing eerie ultrasound images of fetuses that more frequently moved their mouths and touched their faces when their mothers were either stressed out or, even more so, when they smoked cigarettes—likely a sign of delayed nervous-system development. In a longer-term study published two years ago, neuroscientists at four universities scanned the brains of a group of twenty-four-year-olds and found that, in those who had lived in poverty at age nine, the brain’s centers of negative emotion were more frequently buzzing with activity, whereas the areas that could rein in such emotions were quieter. Elsewhere, stress in childhood has been shown to make people prone to depression, heart disease, and addiction in adulthood.

Over the past decade, the scientific consensus has become clear:poverty perpetuates poverty, generation after generation, by acting on the brain. The National Scientific Council has been working directly with policymakers to support measures that break this cycle, including better prenatal and pediatric care and more accessible preschool education. Levitt and his colleagues have also been advocating for changing laws that criminalize drug abuse during pregnancy, since, as they pointed out in a review paper, arrest and incarceration can also trigger the “maternal stress response system.” The story that science is now telling rearranges the morality of parenting and poverty, making it harder to blame problem children on problem parents. Building a healthy brain, it seems, is an act of barn raising.

Throwing money, no, I do think we need a structured program that isn't labeled as "throwing money". Welfare is "throwing money" at a problem that no one wants to address.

Welfare exists because it keeps a part of the populace somewhat satisfied, and keeps any social unrest from popping up.

Yes - we need to get kids out of poverty.

Yes, that will help them later in life - or early in life.

Problem is, you can't just throw money at the situation. The home life needs to change. And you can't change the home life by just throwing money at the situation.

The evidence shows minimum wage, which once meant "livable wage", now means payment received for one of the 2 or 3 jobs you need to live at lowest level. It also means the middle class' standard of living has been sacrificed for golden parachutes and toilets.

Options such as increasing the minimum wage to a livable wage or creating a guaranteed basic income for all citizens are lampooned and opposed by large segments of society.

T

I dare you to tell me, after reading this, that we don't need anymore support for those in poverty. No bootstrap will help, as many aren't given the tools to find that bootstrap in poverty! This isn't about making excuses. This is about accepting reality, and stop turning a blind eye to a problem that no one wants to solve. If only Dr. King would've lived for a much longer time.

No, no liberal bias present from a research study based on actual facts.

I wish this text would have better explained the obvious question of how they separated this impact on development from genetics.

Gee, makes me wonder how the starving immigrant Irish, Italians and Jews ever made it in this Country. Many all the way to the 1%.

This is weaseling. Using the word many implies either a majority or close to it. Show me statistics that prove the majority of immigrant irish, italians, and jews made it to the 1% in this country.

Did immigrants make it to the 1%? Sure they did. They also had a higher chance of being struck by lightning than making it there. We worked very hard in this country to improve income inequality at the turn of the 20th century and have been working to eradicate that progress since the era of Reagan.

We worked very hard in this country to improve income inequality at the turn of the 20th century and have been working to eradicate that progress since the era of Reagan.

I think you are talking about the segment who is forced to pay for it all, out of their earnings.

Until fundamental changes in society occurs,

including the raising of taxes,

raising the minimum wage to a living wage,

creating a basic living income, etc., poverty will not be a problem we are able to solve.

You can just keep pretending if it makes you happy.
America itself is made up of those immigrants and their children who made it up the ladder of success after starving.
As far as 1% are concerned, I know a bunch of them and they are Irish, Scottish, Jews, Italians and so on. Most of todays middle class is also made up of them.
But I don't want to upset your agenda so just keep right on pretending. You go ahead and look it up if you don't believe me.

I'm curious, what is your solution to eradicate 'income inequality'? Should we just make everyone's pay $50/hr and be done with it? Does a burger flipper with less than a HS education deserve to make as much money as an engineer who went through years of schooling and continuing education to stay relevant in the workplace?

my problem is when having these discussions, the opposing view on this is so quick to use extremes as a reason. like the 1 percent.

I'm not mad that people are stupid rich. hell, i've said on this board that i want to do whatever it takes to be there one day.

The conversation is about poverty, and having equal opportunity. too many times, people(read: 40) want's to try and change this into a war on the rich conversation.

which is coincidentally what politicians do to make sure nothing gets done.

I understand what you are saying about the overtime arch. But some people wish to spend time with their families, their kids sports, hobbies and other things besides work.

my problem is when having these discussions, the opposing view on this is so quick to use extremes as a reason. like the 1 percent.

I'm not mad that people are stupid rich. hell, i've said on this board that i want to do whatever it takes to be there one day.

The conversation is about poverty, and having equal opportunity. too many times, people(read: 40) want's to try and change this into a war on the rich conversation.

which is coincidentally what politicians do to make sure nothing gets done.

I agree. That's a good thing to spend time with family.

And, along with that, people need to live within their means. If turning down overtime to spend that extra 2 hours with their family is what they want to do - do it.

But don't gripe about not making enough money when the money is there for the having.

Like I said - I flat out know of a company in Bryan Ohio that is looking for employees that will show up on time to put in 40 hours a week, and they can't find them at $12 an hour. (by the way, it's 4 10 hour days - so bam, they would have 3 day weekends every week if they wanted).

How is raising the min. wage going to affect that company?

There is no way to make everyone 1%. To have a 1% you need a 99%.

But to excuse the most powerful country in history as allowing starving children to exist within its borders (and other downsides of poverty) is a gross disservice to all. We claim to be a God fearing nation yet snub our noses at children going hungry as their fault for not working hard enough. Okay...

Taxes are high enough. Spending is the problem.

Minimum wage was NEVER designed or thought to be a "living wage". Ever.

Work ethic helps. A lot. I have a friend that manages a company - they start paying at $12 an hour and have many employees between $15 and $20 an hour. This is for the people on the shop floor. They need employees. The work is there. Problem is, they can't find people that - get this - actually show up for work on time OR that want to work overtime.

Heck, even one of the salesman was running parts Friday night just to get them done. Even the good employees don't want to work overtime. This isn't rocket science stuff. It's putting parts into a machine, hitting a few buttons, letting the machine do it's thing, taking the parts out, repeat.

I'm extremely tempted to see if I can put in 4 hours a day or so - after I finish MY work - just so I can start saving up money for a car for my daughter and the increase in insurance that will cost. An extra grand a month wouldn't be all that bad.

a JOB should be able to pay your rent, at the very least.

I dont see why thats a problem. If i have a JOB, then it should cover basic expenses.

We wanna complain about minimum wage, which your basically telling people to get second and third jobs....

and then in another thread, we will complain about absent parents.


wow.

Did your dad teach you that some people will do the bare minimum - and then gripe because they don't have enough?

Now, we need to keep in mind, regarding minimum wage - not many people start at minimum and stay there for long. IF the employee shows up on time and does their job - they move up. Maybe not in 6 months time are they making $12 an hour. But if they are a reliable employee, they certainly aren't making minimum after 6 months.

Like I said - I flat out know of a company in Bryan Ohio that is looking for employees that will show up on time to put in 40 hours a week, and they can't find them at $12 an hour. (by the way, it's 4 10 hour days - so bam, they would have 3 day weekends every week if they wanted).

How is raising the min. wage going to affect that company?