It's clear that coming from more humble beginnings can make ordinary life tougher in a lot of ways, and now a new study suggests that the experience of poverty and adversity can also alter biological mechanisms related to brain function, giving rise to increased chances of developing depression.
By analysing the brains of adolescents, researchers have found that those growing up in households with lower socioeconomic status accumulated greater amounts of a chemical tag on a gene linked to depression, called SLC6A4.
These kinds of epigenetic tags ā meaning they're caused by environmental or external factors ā can alter the activity of our genes, and in this case, the researchers found they increased the adolescent brain's 'fight or flight' response. That response is controlled by an area of the brain called the amygdala, and the team found that participants with a more active amygdala were more likely to develop symptoms of depression later on.
[For more of this story, written by Peter Dockrill, go to http://www.sciencealert.com/po...pression-study-finds]
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