How Poverty Changes the Brain

How Poverty Changes the Brain

Tara García Mathewson

You saw the pictures in science class—a profile view of the human brain, sectioned by function. The piece at the very front, right behind where a forehead would be if the brain were actually in someone’s head, is the pre-frontal cortex. It handles problem-solving, goal-setting, and task execution. And it works with the limbic system, which is connected and sits closer to the center of the brain. The limbic system processes emotions and triggers emotional responses, in part because of its storage of long-term memory.

When a person lives in poverty, a growing body of research suggests the limbic system is constantly sending fear and stress messages to the prefrontal cortex, which overloads its ability to solve problems, set goals, and complete tasks in the most efficient ways.

This happens to everyone at some point, regardless of social class. The overload can be prompted by any number of things, including an overly stressful day at work or a family emergency. People in poverty, however, have the added burden of ever-present stress. They are constantly struggling to make ends meet and often bracing themselves against class bias that adds extra strain or even trauma to their daily lives.

And the science is clear—when brain capacity is used up on these worries and fears, there simply isn’t as much bandwidth for other things.

How Poverty Changes the Brain

Tara García Mathewson

That 'growing body' links to an interesting article... 

How Poverty Changes the Brain

Tara García Mathewson

If you think about the evidence for the effects of poverty in the article you've posted... and what we - more recently - know about epigenetic inheritance (methylation of DNA, and now small RNA effects), and the well known problems with correlating DNA with final outcome for the organism, i.e. how predictive really is DNA?, because the actual development of the organism is so interwoven and affected instantaneously by the environment.... or even thinking about the type of individuals the education system is biased to favour (perhaps people who learn and retain information quickly, i.e. those who quickly build and reinforce their networks), but some of those people, might be the very people that are more conservative, and have less plasticity in later life... and you listen to this video... you wonder just how useful his research can be if it's showing random movement from the bulk of the populations IQ in the middle of a bell shaped curve, to the outside of the curve in every new generation, and vice versa. (I haven't looked at his research at all).



I had a difficult childhood, I mean today I would have been identified by social services as growing up in a practical environment of neglect at home. I also suffered from learning difficulties, which meant that by the time I ended up in Junior School at around age 7, I was unable to read or write, and was sent to sit outside in the corridor on the dunces table, and look at magazines during some classes. Yet my mother was convinced I was bright, and despite the practical neglect, she got me tested, and diagnosed with Dyslexia in the mid 70's (which was pretty damn early). My parents got me a private English teacher who was interested in my case, but somewhat skeptical about the idea of Dyslexia...

After approximately 2 years of hellish (repetition, repetition, repetition) of private teaching I eventually learnt to read and write and thus I got out of an educational situation in which I could so easily have been trapped throughout the rest of my life. My private tutor, who was the head of English at a top private girls school, and was skeptical about Dyslexia was quite frankly amazed at me, she thought I was really bright... but confided to my mum that she had never seen anything like it... She couldn't understand how I was losing the ability to spell words, that I had already learnt to spell just two weeks ago.

It's just not well recognized, that the speed of network erosion (which might handicap someones childhood learning at school), might also be useful later in life... because it seems to keep pruning away the weaker network connections... allowing you to free yourself time and time again from extraneous detail when learning, and allowing you to retain a sense of just the larger structures and relationships... in a network sense, it sort of helps to prevent me from getting into a position where I can't see the wood for the trees.

When I talk to people about my ideas... I now realise that most people are biologically unable to understand these very widely spaced connections I make... they don't even know what I'm going on about... and in the same way, some of the finer structured concepts they talk about to me, just pass me by without me ever even noticing them.

I visualize a future education system that will measure each students particular neural network spacing, and test students for their speed of network creation, reinforcement, as well as their speed of the network erosion... setting them on learning pathways through their life that are appropriate to their unique abilities. At present I think the state education system is biased towards retention of a certain type of information, which must be learnt at a certain age...

I'd like to see a more scientific approach adopted towards a persons state education, one which considers all neural types as having interesting abilities that society might value if correctly nurtured... rather than the relatively blunt, one size fits all system, that involves so much 'chance'.

How Poverty Changes the Brain

Tara García Mathewson

How are they defining poverty ? That's a 'wide' term (to define) and I'd be extremely sceptical that even undernourished children (which is of course a scandal) had inferior intellects. My own father was as impoverished as it's possible to be (going back to the 1920/30s) like millions of kids but their intellect wasn't defective. They did of course suffer from other physical problems of malnutrition which was disgraceful and led to the great reforms which many modern commenters (not you Sci) have forgotten about.

How Poverty Changes the Brain

Tara García Mathewson

I'm curious. Why did you post this article? It doesn't seem to me to relate to the brain-mind philosophical and other issues that have been occupying this forum, since this is just another way among a myriad already known for a long time by which physical damage, drugs, genetic factors, disease etc. etc. can change the brain and thereby affect consciousness. The transmission, transceiver, filter and other theories already well account for these facts while at the same time also account for the great body of empirical evidence for the ultimate independence of the mind from the physical brain.

I'm curious. Why did you post this article? It doesn't seem to me to relate to the brain-mind philosophical and other issues that have been occupying this forum, since this is just another way among a myriad already known for a long time by which physical damage, drugs, genetic factors, disease etc. etc. can change the brain and thereby affect consciousness. The transmission, transceiver, filter and other theories already well account for these facts while at the same time also account for the great body of empirical evidence for the ultimate independence of the mind from the physical brain.

It related to consciousness science?

Beyond that, no reason at all other than I thought people might find it interesting. I think most of the stuff I post in this particular forum is more related to diet/environment and how that affects the mind than stuff related to Psi, metaphysics, etc which I usually post elsewhere.