ArticlePublisher preview available

Introduction to the Special Focus: The Affective Neuroscience of Poverty

September 2022
34(10):1806-1809

Authors:

Growing up in poverty is associated with a heightened risk for mental and physical health problems across the life span, and there is a growing recognition of the role that social determinants of health play in driving these outcomes and inequities. How do the social conditions of poverty get under the skin to influence biology, and through what mechanisms do the stressors of poverty generate risk for a broad range of health problems? The growing field examining the neuroscience of socioeconomic status (SES) proposes that the brain is an entry point or pathway through which poverty and adversity become embedded in biology to generate these disparities. To date, however, the majority of research on the neuroscience of SES has focused on cognitive or executive control processes. However, the relationship between SES and brain systems involved in affective or emotional processes may be especially important for understanding social determinants of health. Accordingly, this Special Focus on The Affective Neuroscience of Poverty invited contributions from authors examining the relationship between SES and brain systems involved in generating and regulating emotions. In this editorial introduction, we (a) provide an overview of the neuroscience of SES; (b) introduce each of the articles in this Special Focus; and (c) discuss the scientific, treatment, and policy implications of studying the affective neuroscience of poverty.

A preview of this full-text is provided by The MIT Press.

Content available from Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

This content is subject to copyright.

Introduction to the Special Focus: The Affective

Neuroscience of Poverty

Robin Nusslock

and Martha J. Farah

Abstract

■Growing up in poverty is associated with a heightened risk

for mental and physical health problems across the life span,

and there is a growing recognition of the role that social deter-

minants of health play in driving these outcomes and inequities.

How do the social conditions of poverty get under the skin to

influence biology, and through what mechanisms do the

stressors of poverty generate risk for a broad range of health

problems? The growing field examining the neuroscience of

socioeconomic status (SES) proposes that the brain is an entry

point or pathway through which poverty and adversity become

embedded in biology to generate these disparities. To date,

however, the majority of research on the neuroscience of SES

has focused on cognitive or executive control processes. How-

ever, the relationship between SES and brain systems involved

in affective or emotional processes may be especially important

for understanding social determinants of health. Accordingly,

this Special Focus on TheAffectiveNeuroscienceofPoverty

invited contributions from authors examining the relationship

between SES and brain systems involved in generating and reg-

ulating emotions. In this editorial introduction, we (a) provide

an overview of the neuroscience of SES; (b) introduce each of

the articles in this Special Focus; and (c) discuss the scientific,

treatment, and policy implications of studying the affective neu-

roscience of poverty. ■

Poverty is a powerful risk factor for mental and physical

health problems across the life span. Socioeconomic sta-

tus (SES) is associated with depression, anxiety, psychosis,

and academic achievement, as well as heart disease,

stroke, cancer, diabetes, and early mortality (McLaughlin,

Costello, Leblanc, Sampson, & Kessler, 2012; Adler &

Stewart, 2010; Kessler et al., 2005; Sirin, 2005). There is a

growing recognition of the important role that social

determinants play in driving these mental and physical

health inequities (Braveman & Gottlieb, 2014). Social

determinants of health are the conditions in the environ-

ment where people are born, live, learn, work, and play

that affect a wide range of health and quality-of-life out-

comes (Marmot et al., 2008). An important question is,

how do the social conditions of poverty get under the skin

to influence the biology of a developing child? And

through what mechanisms do these social determinants

generate risk for such a broad set of mental and physical

health outcomes? Over the past decade, researchers have

begun to examine the role of the brain in answering these

questions (Noble & Giebler, 2020; Farah, 2017). From this

perspective, the brain is an entry point or pathway through

which poverty and adversity become embedded in biology

to generate health disparities (McEwen & Gianaros, 2010).

Collectively, this small but growing field examining rela-

tionships between the brain, poverty, and health is

referred to as the neuroscience of SES.

SES is construed as a dimension that varies from “worse

off”to “better off,”with those who are better off having

more material resources (e.g., income) and nonmaterial

resources, including education and neighborhood quality.

Historically, SES has been relegated to the status of a covar-

iate or confound in the field of neuroscience. However,

there is increasing evidence that the stress of living in pov-

erty affects the developing brain in a manner that deserves

its own investigation (Noble, Engelhardt, et al., 2015; Brito

& Noble, 2014). The growth of knowledge on this topic is

apparent from the fact that there were only a handful of

studies on the neural correlates of SES in early reviews

(Raizada & Kishiyama, 2010; Hackman & Farah, 2009),

compared with dozens of relevant studies today. We now

know from neurophysiology and both structural and func-

tional imaging studies that early exposure to poverty is

associated with alterations in brain systems involved in a

variety of cognitive processes, including executive control,

memory, and language (see Johnson, Riis, & Noble, 2016,

for a review). Some of these studies report that neural

alterations mediate the linkage between poverty exposure

and cognitive processes (Hair, Hanson, Wolfe, & Pollak,

2015; Noble, Houston, et al., 2015; Mackey et al., 2015),

suggesting they are not simply correlates of SES, but pos-

sible mechanistic pathways to outcomes that matter.

Most research on the neuroscience of SES has focused

on cognitive processes. This work builds on the cognitive

neuroscience of language, memory, and executive func-

tion and holds promise for understanding the SES achieve-

ment gap, as well as later occupational success (Farah,

Northwestern University, Evanston, IL,

University of

Pennsylvania

https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01899

The Promise and Challenges of Integrating Biological and Prevention Sciences: A Community-Engaged Model for the Next Generation of Translational Research

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2024
PREV SCI

Beginning with the successful sequencing of the human genome two decades ago, the possibility of developing personalized health interventions based on one’s biology has captured the imagination of researchers, medical providers, and individuals seeking health care services. However, the application of a personalized medicine approach to emotional and behavioral health has lagged behind the development of personalized approaches for physical health conditions. There is potential value in developing improved methods for integrating biological science with prevention science to identify risk and protective mechanisms that have biological underpinnings, and then applying that knowledge to inform prevention and intervention services for emotional and behavioral health. This report represents the work of a task force appointed by the Board of the Society for Prevention Research to explore challenges and recommendations for the integration of biological and prevention sciences. We present the state of the science and barriers to progress in integrating the two approaches, followed by recommended strategies that would promote the responsible integration of biological and prevention sciences. Recommendations are grounded in Community-Based Participatory Research approaches, with the goal of centering equity in future research aimed at integrating the two disciplines to ultimately improve the well-being of those who have disproportionately experienced or are at risk for experiencing emotional and behavioral problems.

From neural circuits to communities: an integrative multidisciplinary roadmap for global mental health

Article

Jan 2023

Suffering due to mental health problems is rising inexorably in all regions of the world. One major reason is that our understanding of the causation, prevention and treatment of mental health problems has been hindered by an over-reliance on diagnostic categories. Yet there is growing evidence for alternative approaches from across multiple disciplines, including neuroscience, which elucidates neural regions and networks underlying specific mental health experiences; cognitive science, which identifies cognitive functions and impairments relevant to mental health; clinical science, which identifies symptom patterns associated with cognitive dysfunctions; developmental science, which identifies environmental influences on brain development in early life; social science, which identifies sociocultural influences on mental health; intervention science, which identifies the ‘active ingredients’ of psychological interventions; and implementation science, which designs scalable interventions to effectively deliver these active ingredients. We propose an integrative model that converges these diverse disciplinary perspectives, from neural circuits to interventions, that can be delivered at scale, with a potential for higher coverage, greater personalization and greater efficacy than traditional diagnostic approaches. This integrative approach can lead to a radical opportunity to shift the needle on mental health-related suffering globally. In this Perspective, the authors propose a new approach to addressing mental health globally that encompasses a breadth of disciplines, from neuroscience to intervention and implementation sciences.

Higher substance use is associated with low executive control neural activity and higher inflammation

Article

Jun 2024
BRAIN BEHAV IMMUN

Allostatic interoception and brain health: From neurodegeneration to social adversities

Chapter

Jan 2023

Anger, Fear, and Sadness: Relations to Socioeconomic Status and the Amygdala

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022
J COGNITIVE NEUROSCI

Here, we test three often proposed hypotheses about socioeconomic status (SES), affect, and the brain, for which evidence is mixed or lacking. The first hypothesis, that negative affect is more common at lower levels of SES, has ample evidence from studies of psychiatric symptoms but is tested for the first time here across multiple measures of negative emotions in healthy young adults. The second hypothesis is actually a set of hypotheses, that SES is associated with three structural and functional properties of the amygdala. Third, and most important for the affective neuroscience of SES, is the hypothesis that SES differences in the amygdala are responsible for the affective differences. Despite the intuitive appeal of this hypothesis, it has rarely been tested and has never been confirmed. Here, we review the literature for evidence on each of these hypotheses and find in a number of cases that the evidence is weak or nonexistant. We then subject each hypothesis to a new empirical test with a large sample of healthy young adults. We confirm that negative affect is more common at lower levels of SES and we find a positive relation between SES and amygdala volume. However, evidence is weak on the relation of SES to functional properties of amygdala. Finally, the tendency toward negative affect in lower SES individuals cannot be accounted for by the structural or functional characteristics of the amygdala measured here.

Human brain anatomy reflects separable genetic and environmental components of socioeconomic status

Article

Full-text available

May 2022

Socioeconomic status (SES) correlates with brain structure, a relation of interest given the long-observed relations of SES to cognitive abilities and health. Yet, major questions remain open, in particular, the pattern of causality that underlies this relation. In an unprecedently large study, here, we assess genetic and environmental contributions to SES differences in neuroanatomy. We first establish robust SES-gray matter relations across a number of brain regions, cortical and subcortical. These regional correlates are parsed into predominantly genetic factors and those potentially due to the environment. We show that genetic effects are stronger in some areas (prefrontal cortex, insula) than others. In areas showing less genetic effect (cerebellum, lateral temporal), environmental factors are likely to be influential. Our results imply a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors that influence the SES-brain relation and may eventually provide insights relevant to policy.

School Climate, Cortical Structure, and Socioemotional Functioning: Associations across Family Income Levels

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022
J COGNITIVE NEUROSCI

School climates are important for children's socioemotional development and may also serve as protective factors in the context of adversity. Nevertheless, little is known about the potential neural mechanisms of such associations, as there has been limited research concerning the relation between school climate and brain structure, particularly for brain regions relevant for mental health and socioemotional functioning. Moreover, it remains unclear whether the role of school climate differs depending on children's socioeconomic status. We addressed these questions in baseline data for 9- to 10-year-olds from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study (analytic sample for socioemotional outcomes, n = 8887), conducted at 21 sites across the United States. Cortical thickness, cortical surface area, and subcortical volume were derived from T1-weighted brain magnetic resonance imaging. School climate was measured by youth report, and socioemotional functioning was measured by both youth and parent report. A positive school climate and higher family income were associated with lower internalizing and externalizing symptoms, with no evidence of moderation. There were no associations between school climate and cortical thickness or subcortical volume, although family income was positively associated with hippocampal volume. For cortical surface area, however, there was both a positive association with family income and moderation: There was an interaction between school climate and income for total cortical surface area and locally in the lateral orbitofrontal cortex. In all cases, there was an unexpected negative association between school climate and cortical surface area in the lower-income group. Consequently, although the school climate appears to be related to better socioemotional function for all youth, findings suggest that the association between a positive school environment and brain structure only emerges in the context of socioeconomic stress and adversity. Longitudinal data are needed to understand the role of these neural differences in socioemotional functioning over time.

Lower Socioeconomic Position Is Associated with Greater Activity in and Integration within an Allostatic-Interoceptive Brain Network in Response to Affective Stimuli

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022
J COGNITIVE NEUROSCI

Socioeconomic inequities shape physical health and emotional well-being. As such, recent work has examined the neural mechanisms through which socioeconomic position (SEP) may influence health. However, there remain critical gaps in knowledge regarding the relationships between SEP and brain function. These gaps include a lack of research on: (1) the association between SEP and brain functioning in later life, (2) relationships between SEP and functioning of the whole brain beyond specific regions of interest, and (3) how neural responses to positive affective stimuli differ by SEP. The current study addressed these gaps by examining the association between SEP (i.e., education, income) and neural responses to affective stimuli among 122 mid- to late-life adults. During MRI scanning, participants viewed 30 positive, 30 negative, and 30 neutral images; activation and network connectivity analyses explored associations between SEP and neural responses to these affective stimuli. Analyses revealed that those with lower SEP showed greater neural activity to both positive and negative images in regions within the allostatic-interoceptive network, a system of regions implicated in representing and regulating physiological states of the body and the external environment. There were no positive associations between SEP and neural responses to negative or positive images. In addition, graph–theory network analyses showed that individuals with lower SEP demonstrated greater global efficiency within the allostatic-interoceptive network and executive control network, across all task conditions. The findings suggest that lower SEP is associated with enhanced neural sensitivity to affective cues that may be metabolically costly to maintain over time and suggest a mechanism by which SEP might get “under the skull” to influence mental and physical well-being.

Exposure to Violence as an Environmental Pathway Linking Low Socioeconomic Status with Altered Neural Processing of Threat and Adolescent Psychopathology

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022
J COGNITIVE NEUROSCI

Low childhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with increased risk for psychopathology, in part because of heightened exposure to environmental adversity. Adverse experiences can be characterized along dimensions, including threat and deprivation, that contribute to psychopathology via distinct mechanisms. The current study investigated a neural mechanism through which threat and deprivation may contribute to socioeconomic disparities in psychopathology. Participants were 177 youths (83 girls) aged 10–13 years recruited from a cohort followed since the age of 3 years. SES was assessed using the income-to-needs ratio at the age of 3 years. At the age of 10–13 years, retrospective and current exposure to adverse experiences and symptoms of psychopathology were assessed. At this same time point, participants also completed a face processing task (passive viewing of fearful and neutral faces) during an fMRI scan. Lower childhood SES was associated with greater exposure to threat and deprivation experiences. Both threat and deprivation were associated with higher depression symptoms, whereas threat experiences were uniquely linked to posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. Greater exposure to threat, but not deprivation, was associated with higher activation in dorsomedial pFC to fearful compared with neutral faces. The dorsomedial pFC is a hub of the default mode network thought to be involved in internally directed attention and cognition. Experiences of threat, but not deprivation, are associated with greater engagement of this region in response to threat cues. Threat-related adversity contributes to socioeconomic disparities in adolescent psychopathology through distinct mechanisms from deprivation.

Associations among Household and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Disadvantages, Resting-state Frontoamygdala Connectivity, and Internalizing Symptoms in Youth

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022
J COGNITIVE NEUROSCI

Exposure to socioeconomic disadvantages (SED) can have negative impacts on mental health, yet SED are a multifaceted construct and the precise processes by which SED confer deleterious effects are less clear. Using a large and diverse sample of preadolescents (ages 9–10 years at baseline, n = 4038, 49% female) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, we examined associations among SED at both household (i.e., income–needs and material hardship) and neighborhood (i.e., area deprivation and neighborhood unsafety) levels, frontoamygdala resting-state functional connectivity, and internalizing symptoms at baseline and 1-year follow-up. SED were positively associated with internalizing symptoms at baseline and indirectly predicted symptoms 1 year later through elevated symptoms at baseline. At the household level, youth in households characterized by higher disadvantage (i.e., lower income-to-needs ratio) exhibited more strongly negative frontoamygdala coupling, particularly between the bilateral amygdala and medial OFC (mOFC) regions within the frontoparietal network. Although more strongly positive amygdala–mOFC coupling was associated with higher levels of internalizing symptoms at baseline and 1-year follow-up, it did not mediate the association between income-to-needs ratio and internalizing symptoms. However, at the neighborhood level, amygdala–mOFC functional coupling moderated the effect of neighborhood deprivation on internalizing symptoms. Specifically, higher neighborhood deprivation was associated with higher internalizing symptoms for youth with more strongly positive connectivity, but not for youth with more strongly negative connectivity, suggesting a potential buffering effect. Findings highlight the importance of capturing multilevel socioecological contexts in which youth develop to identify youth who are most likely to benefit from early interventions.

The impact of a poverty reduction intervention on infant brain activity

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2022

Significance This study demonstrates the causal impact of a poverty reduction intervention on early childhood brain activity. Data from the Baby’s First Years study, a randomized control trial, show that a predictable, monthly unconditional cash transfer given to low-income families may have a causal impact on infant brain activity. In the context of greater economic resources, children’s experiences changed, and their brain activity adapted to those experiences. The resultant brain activity patterns have been shown to be associated with the development of subsequent cognitive skills.

Low Socioeconomic Status Is Associated with a Greater Neural Response to Both Rewards and Losses

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022
J COGNITIVE NEUROSCI

Low socioeconomic status (SES) has been associated with distinct patterns of reward processing, which appear to have adverse implications for health outcomes, well-being, and human capital. However, most studies in this literature have used complex tasks that engage more than reward processing and/or retrospectively studied childhood SES in samples of adults. To clarify how SES relates to the development of reward processing tendencies, we measured income-to-poverty ratio (IPR) in 172 youth who subsequently underwent functional MRI while completing a passive avoidance task to assess neural responses to reward and loss information. Participants were 12–15 years old (mean = 13.94, SD = .52; 65.7% female) from a sample broadly representative of the Chicago area in terms of SES (IPR range = 0.1–34.53; mean = 3.90; SD = 4.15) and racial makeup (40.1% White 30.8% Black; 29.1% Hispanic). To the extent they had lower IPR, children displayed a trend toward worse behavioral performance on the passive avoidance task. Lower IPR also was associated with a greater response in attention brain regions to reward and loss cues and to reward and loss feedback. Lower IPR also was associated with reduced differentiation between reward and loss feedback in the ventromedial prefrontal and parietal cortex. The current data suggest that both increased salience of reward/loss information and reduced discrimination between reward and loss feedback could be factors linking SES with the development of human capital and health outcomes.

Differential Developmental Associations of Material Hardship Exposure and Adolescent Amygdala–Prefrontal Cortex White Matter Connectivity

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022
J COGNITIVE NEUROSCI

Accumulating literature has linked poverty to brain structure and function, particularly in affective neural regions; however, few studies have examined associations with structural connections or the importance of developmental timing of exposure. Moreover, prior neuroimaging studies have not used a proximal measure of poverty (i.e., material hardship, which assesses food, housing, and medical insecurity) to capture the lived experience of growing up in harsh economic conditions. The present investigation addressed these gaps collectively by examining the associations between material hardship (ages 1, 3, 5, 9, and 15 years) and white matter connectivity of frontolimbic structures (age 15 years) in a low-income sample. We applied probabilistic tractography to diffusion imaging data collected from 194 adolescents. Results showed that material hardship related to amygdala–prefrontal, but not hippocampus–prefrontal or hippocampus–amygdala, white matter connectivity. Specifically, hardship during middle childhood (ages 5 and 9 years) was associated with greater connectivity between the amygdala and dorsomedial pFC, whereas hardship during adolescence (age 15 years) was related to reduced amygdala–orbitofrontal (OFC) and greater amygdala–subgenual ACC connectivity. Growth curve analyses showed that greater increases of hardship across time were associated with both greater (amygdala–subgenual ACC) and reduced (amygdala–OFC) white matter connectivity. Furthermore, these effects remained above and beyond other types of adversity, and greater hardship and decreased amygdala–OFC connectivity were related to increased anxiety and depressive symptoms. Results demonstrate that the associations between material hardship and white matter connections differ across key prefrontal regions and developmental periods, providing support for potential windows of plasticity for structural circuits that support emotion processing.

Randomized Manipulation of Early Cognitive Experience Impacts Adult Brain Structure

Article

Full-text available

May 2021
J COGNITIVE NEUROSCI

Does early exposure to cognitive and linguistic stimulation impact brain structure? Or do genetic predispositions account for the co-occurrence of certain neuroanatomical phenotypes and a tendency to engage children in cognitively stimulating activities? Low socioeconomic status infants were randomized to either 5 years of cognitively and linguistically stimulating center-based care or a comparison condition. The intervention resulted in large and statistically significant changes in brain structure measured in midlife, particularly for male individuals. These findings are the first to extend the large literature on cognitive enrichment effects on animal brains to humans, and to demonstrate the effects of uniquely human features such as linguistic stimulation.

Introduction to the Special Focus: The Affective Neuroscience of Poverty

Abstract

Recommended publications

Socioeconomic status and the brain: prospects for neuroscience-informed policy

Socioeconomic Inequality and the Developing Brain: Spotlight on Language and Executive Function

The Neuroscience of Socioeconomic Status: Correlates, Causes, and Consequences

Socioeconomic Factors in Brain Research: Increasing Sample Representativeness with Portable MRI