Scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis analyzed the brain scans of 105 children ages 7 to 12 and found that key structures in the brain are connected differently in poor children than in kids raised in more affluent settings. In particular, the brain's hippocampus, associated with learning, memory, and the regulation of stress, and the amygdala, which is linked to stress and emotion, connect to other areas of the brain differently in poor children than in kids whose families had higher incomes.
Those connections, viewed using functional MRI scans, were weaker depending on the degree of poverty to which a child was exposed. The poorer the family, the more likely the hippocampus and amygdala would connect to other brain structures in ways the researchers characterized as weaker. In addition, poorer preschoolers were much more likely to have symptoms of clinical depression when they reached school age.
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