How should we talk about poverty and brain development?

Earlier this week, Nick Kristof published a column about the need to invest in programs to support the healthy development of infants and children, a worthy cause that he and many others have championed before.

He wrote, “A wave of recent research in neuroscience explains why early childhood is so critical: That’s when the brain is developing most quickly. Children growing up in poverty face high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which changes the architecture of the brain, compromising areas like the amygdala and hippocampus.”

A fervent Kristof fan, I agree with him 100 percent. Learning about the link between factors related to socioeconomic status and brain development instilled in me a sense of urgency and inspiration that continue to motivate me to pursue developmental cognitive neuroscience research.

But I wonder about the ways in which we discuss and think about this link. What are the implications of telling people parts of their brain may have been “compromised” by their circumstances?

As a researcher, I find it empowering to understand that the environments in which we grow up have a profound influence on the development of our ability to learn and think. Individual differences in cognitive ability are of course influenced by genes, but those genes interact with environmental influences, and those interactions shape the way the brain develops and continues to interact and be changed by other parts of the brain and experiences with the external world. Gaps in cognitive achievement can be closed. They’re not innate. They can be changed without editing the genome.

Reducing kids’ early exposure to toxic stress and enriching their early environments by increasing things like the quantity and quality of language they are exposed to can have a lasting influence not just on what kids learn, but on how well they are able to pay attention to, remember, and flexibly use relevant information.

Still, even as I admire the missions and incredible efforts of certain organizations to support kids, I worry about the implications of the names of programs like “Saving Brains” and “No Lost Generation.”

These names imply that people who grew up in less-than-ideal circumstances failed to be “saved” or were “lost.”

How can we call attention to the critical importance of bolstering support for vulnerable children without implying that people who have grown up in impoverished environments never reached their full cognitive potential? How can we use neuroscience research to inspire policymakers to enhance early learning environments for low-SES infants and children without perpetuating the harmful belief that their parents, many of whom likely grew up in similar environments, have poor impulse control and decision-making skills?

One one of their project websites, Saving Brains, which is part of the Grand Challenges Canada initiative, directly addresses this issue. They write,

“Many adults who have been raised in conditions of significant stress — or who are currently undergoing acute stress — struggle to keep track of the multiple problems in their lives, analyze those problems, explore options for dealing with them, and set priorities for how best to move ahead.”

This is likely true. But I think it would also be true if the phrase “who have been raised in conditions of significant stress” were removed. Many people struggle to keep track of and prioritize their problems. I don’t have first-hand experience with it, but parenting seems hard, particularly in a resource-strapped setting. Is it really an effective strategy to imply that parenting is particularly challenging for some people because their brains didn’t develop well? This seems misguided, and dangerous in a society in which poverty already comes attached with a deep stigma.

Calling attention to the importance of enhancing early childhood welfare is critical, but I wonder if emphasizing the link between socioeconomic status and neurocognitive development will have the unintended consequence of increasing support only for the types of welfare programs in which recipients of benefits are given almost no agency over how to use them. (Though organizations like Saving Brains do recognize that the brain is still plastic into adulthood and work directly with parents as well.)

So what’s the solution? I’m not sure.

I grew up in a home environment with very little stress. My days were filled with enriching activities. I went to a high-quality preschool program. And so when I read scientific articles about the effects of early experiences on brain and cognitive development, I can rest assured that my prefrontal cortex was given optimal opportunity to develop its capacity to direct my goal-oriented behavior. But what if I hadn’t? What would it be like to read these articles from the other vantage point? Do researchers think about that or do they just falsely assume little overlap between their subject pool and their target audience? And what would it be like to know that others might not fully understand the nuance within them — the idea that these general patterns do not necessarily say anything about a specific individual’s cognitive skills?

Martha Farah, one of the leaders in this field of work, is a brilliant researcher whose articles have elucidated specific mechanisms and pathways through which differences in early experience shape differences in neural architecture. But this paragraph on her website makes me uneasy:

“People of low SES face enormous economic and social barriers to improving their lives. It is a tragic irony that they so often face this challenge with diminished capabilities as a result of the hardships experienced early in life.”

Isn’t it also a tragic irony that the same researchers who are working to break this cycle might unintentionally be writing about people of low SES in a way that reinforces negative stereotypes?

I’m asking these questions because I’m worried that I’m guilty of doing the same thing, and I want to figure out how to talk about these research questions without falsely diminishing the talents and capabilities of an entire swath of people. They’re questions I hope more people — including many of my scientific heroes — will ask in the future.