Have Mum and Dad got a few quid to spare? You’d better hope so, because the wealthier your parents are, the larger the surface area of your brain is likely to be – a structural feature known to be associated with greater intelligence in children.
This is according to the world’s largest study of child brain structure and socioeconomic status. The results also reveal a link between brain surface area and the education levels of a child’s parents.
Read original study: “Family income, parental education and brain structure in children and adolescents”
Previous research has shown that factors such as a parent’s job, education and income correlate with a child’s intelligence, but determining the cause hasn’t been easy.
“Children from lower income families have shown on average more difficulties with language functioning, school performance and other metrics of cognitive development,” says Elizabeth Sowell at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in California. “This is not to say that all economically disadvantaged children perform worse than all children with greater financial resources, but it is likely that resources afforded to the more affluent impact the way the brain develops.”
So, what might explain the relationship between socioeconomic status and brain structure? More money may enable parents to better support their child’s cognitive development, allowing them to buy more nutritious food, for example. It may also mean parents are less stressed and can devote more time to their children. “We believe these differences are likely to be most influential early in childhood, when the brain is most malleable to experience,” says Kimberly Noble of Columbia University in New York, who worked on the study.
Read full, original article: A big bank balance leads to big-brained babies
