"Kids from lower socioeconomic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult," said Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology. "We found that kids are more likely to have a low response if they have low socioeconomic status, though not everyone who is poor has low frontal lobe response."That means that poverty itself cannot be the only issue. There are variables within low income groups that affect brain development.
"This is a wake-up call," Knight said. "It's not just that these kids are poor and more likely to have health problems, but they might actually not be getting full brain development from the stressful and relatively impoverished environment associated with low socioeconomic status: fewer books, less reading, fewer games, fewer visits to museums."The "impoverishment" is strongly related to language use, problem solving and creativity. That means that the answers are not far away:
"In work that we and others have done, it really looks like something as simple and easily done as talking to your kids" can boost prefrontal cortex performance, [study co-author W. Thomas] Boyce said. . . . "[C]hanging developmental outcomes might involve something as accessible as helping parents to understand that it is important that kids sit down to dinner with their parents, and that over the course of that dinner it would be good for there to be a conversation. . ."
Silvia Bunge, UC Berkeley assistant professor of psychology reflected, "The study is suggestive and a little bit frightening that environmental conditions have such a strong impact on brain development." It may be frightening, or it may be exciting. Since environmental conditions have such a strong impact on brain development, it means that the way to address the roots of educational inequity and poverty is to inform, engage and empower parents. Parents really do matter. The nurture that they provide, particularly during the first five years does have a significant influence on their children's brain development - and therefore on education and social opportunity. The question now is: Do we have the courage to change?
