Effect of socioeconomic status (SES) disparity on neural development in female African-American infants at age 1 month.
There is increasing interest in both the cumulative and long-term impact of early life adversity on brain structure and function, especially as the brain is both highly vulnerable and highly adaptive during childhood. Relationships between SES and neural development have been shown in children older than age 2 years. Less is known regarding the impact of SES on neural development in children before age 2. This paper examines the effect of SES, indexed by income-to-needs (ITN) and maternal education, on cortical gray, deep gray, and white matter volumes in term, healthy, appropriate for gestational age, African-American, female infants. At 5 weeks postnatal age, unsedated infants underwent MRI (3.0T Siemens Verio scanner, 32-channel head coil). Images were segmented based on a locally constructed template. Utilizing hierarchical linear regression, SES effects on MRI volumes were examined. In this cohort of healthy African-American female infants of varying SES, lower SES was associated with smaller cortical gray and deep gray matter volumes. These SES effects on neural outcome at such a young age build on similar studies of older children, suggesting that the biological embedding of adversity may occur very early in development.
Department of Neonatology, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, USA. betancourtl@email.chop.edu.
Laura M
LM
Betancourt
Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Brian
B
Avants
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Martha J
MJ
Farah
Department of Neonatology, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, USA.
Nancy L
NL
Brodsky
Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Jue
J
Wu
Department of Radiology, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, USA.
Manzar
M
Ashtari
Department of Neonatology, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, USA.|The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.
Hallam
H
Hurt
D001741:Black or African American; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D066128:Gray Matter / Q000254:growth & development; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D000072741:Maternal Inheritance; D009420:Nervous System / Q000254:growth & development; D012923:Social Class; D066127:White Matter / Q000254:growth & development