Brain development begins in the womb. While a fetus is still in its early developmental stages, its brain can be changed and altered in ways that can affect the rest of its life. According to The New Yorker, if a woman is under high stress during pregnancy, the hormone cortisol can “get through the placenta into the fetus”. Cortisol helps us manage difficult situations, but high levels of cortisol over a long time can be detrimental. This can influence the fetus’s brain and alter the circuitry. When the child is born and continues growing, cortisol from his or her own body can “sabotage” their brains future development.
For years, neuroscientists have been researching the effects poverty takes on brain development. Robert Sapolsky, a brain researcher at Stanford University, claims that physicians now believe that the thymus gland in poor children develops smaller due to stresses of poverty.
“Recent studies show that the brains of poor children are impacted by poverty. An historical example of this claim, given by Sapolsky, demonstrates this dramatically. For many years, children’s thymus glands were radiated to prevent SIDS (eventually causing thyroid cancer in thousands of adults). Physicians believed that the normal thymus in children should be small, which is what they saw in the children they dissected because the only bodies autopsied at the time were that of poor people. In fact, the gland was small due to the stresses of poverty. The thymus gland in normal children is large and grows smaller with age”(Psychology Today).
Stress and poverty go hand in hand. Living in poverty is one of the most stressful situations in which a person can be. In another study done by Boston’s Children’s Hospital, it was found that there is a correlation between atrophied brains and stress. Atrophy in the brain means that there are less neurons or neuron activity.
“Atrophy of any tissue means loss of cells. In brain tissue, atrophy describes a loss of neurons and the connections between them. Atrophy can be generalized, which means that all of the brain has shrunk; or it can be focal, affecting only a limited area of the brain and resulting in a decrease of the functions that area of the brain controls”(BrainFacts.org).
With such jarring physical evidence, there is no question that children from low income homes face greater hardships than those from middle and upper class homes. It is apparent that these children need more support from the school system. Sapolsky says: “Higher income inequality intensifies a community's hierarchy and makes social support less available: truly symmetrical, reciprocal, affiliative support exists only among equals”(PsychologyToday).
