Assessment of Neighborhood Poverty, Cognitive Function, and Prefrontal and Hippocampal Volumes in Children

Abstract

IMPORTANCE The association between poverty and unfavorable cognitive outcomes is robust, but most research has focused on individual household socioeconomic status (SES). There is increasing evidence that neighborhood context explains unique variance not accounted for by household SES. OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether neighborhood poverty (NP) is associated with cognitive function and prefrontal and hippocampal brain structure in ways that are dissociable from household SES. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS This cross-sectional study used a baseline sample of the ongoing longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. The ABCD Study will follow participants for assessments each year for 10 years. Data were collected at 21 US sites, mostly within urban and suburban areas, between September 2019 and October 2018. School-based recruitment was used to create a participant sample reflecting the US population. Data analysis was conducted from March to June 2019. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES NP and household SES were included as factors potentially associated with National Institutes of Health Toolbox Cognitive Battery subtests and hippocampal and prefrontal (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex [DLPFC], dorsomedial PFC [DMPFC], superior frontal gyrus [SFG]) volumes. Independent variables were first considered individually and then together in mixed-effects models with age, sex, and intracranial volume as covariates. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess shared variance in NP to brain structure and cognitive task associations. The tested hypotheses were formulated after data collection. RESULTS A total of 11 875 children aged 9 and 10 years (5678 [47.8%] girls) were analyzed. Greater NP was associated with lower scores across all cognitive domains (eg, total composite: β = −0.18;

School Closures and Returning to School: Views of Parents of Children With Disabilities in England During the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…This result highlights the widely recognized role of socioeconomic factors (often intersected with ethnicity) as vectors of psychological vulnerability in face of adversity (e.g. Morrissey and Vinopal, 2018;Taylor et al, 2020), but also underlines the importance of cumulative risk in children and families with SEND who are also from deprived communities. In other words, children with SEND from poorer backgrounds are much more likely to be affected, psychologically, by national lockdowns.…”

Neighborhood disadvantage and longitudinal brain-predicted-age trajectory during adolescence

“…Past work, however, has not quantified normative development, and deviations from said development at an individual level, which would be beneficial for testing hypotheses about accelerated versus delayed development. Further, despite neighborhood disadvantage having unique effects on childhood behavioral ( Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000 ) and brain development ( Gard et al, 2021 ; Taylor et al, 2020 ; Rakesh et al, 2021b ), no work to our knowledge has examined neighborhood-disadvantage-associated deviations from typical brain development trajectories at an individual level. Using machine learning models, an individual’s brain age can be predicted based on neuroimaging data, thus allowing quantification of the extent to which an individual deviates from typical neurodevelopment.…”

Child obesity moderates the association between poverty and academic achievement

“…It is possible that structural and functional brain development mediate the influence of poverty on children's academic achievement (Farah, 2017; Haft & Hoeft, 2017). Relative to their peers from more advantaged backgrounds, children growing up in impoverished settings are more likely to exhibit deficits across several cognitive domains, with group differences most pronounced in executive function (Farah, 2017; Haft & Hoeft, 2017; Taylor et al, 2020). It is yet to be determined whether a causal relationship exists between executive function and academic achievement (Jacob & Parkinson, 2015).…”

“…Indeed, children growing up in low‐income families are more likely to be exposed to long‐term stressors including environmental pollution and toxin exposure (e.g., lead; Sargent et al, 1995), under‐resourced communities (Bischoff & Reardon, 2014), high‐crime neighborhoods, homelessness, unstable housing, overcrowded households (Evans, 2004), family instability, directive‐based parenting styles (Dunifon & Kowaleski‐Jones, 2002; Jones et al, 2018; Lareau, 2003), parental psychiatric illness (Cox, 2018; Jensen, 2009; Treat et al, 2019), limited environmental and cognitive stimulation (Cedeño et al, 2016; Hair et al, 2015), and poor nutrition (Giskes et al, 2008; Hair et al, 2015). This is noteworthy because increased exposure to household and community poverty in childhood influences later life brain structure (Johnson et al, 2016; Luby et al, 2013; Taylor et al, 2020) and function (Johnson et al, 2016; Kim et al, 2013; Taylor et al, 2020). Additionally, economic disadvantage is associated with behavioral issues (Dike, 2017), as well as deficits across several cognitive domains such as executive function, attention and concentration, information‐processing speed, learning capacity, and working and modality‐specific memory (Black et al, 2017; Farah, 2017; Haft & Hoeft, 2017; Lund et al, 2020).…”