Poverty, crime linked to differences in newborns' brains
Pregnant mothers' environments influence brain development before birth


Date:
April 12, 2022
Source:
Washington University School of Medicine
Summary:
Scanning the brains of newborns, researchers have found that
maternal exposure to poverty and crime can influence the structure
and function of young brains even before babies make their entrances
into the world.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Poverty and crime can have devastating effects on a child's health. But
a new study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine
in St. Louis suggests that some environmental factors influence the
structure and function of young brains even before babies make their
entrances into the world.


==========================================================================
A study published online April 12 in the journal JAMA Network Open
found that MRI scans performed on healthy newborns while they slept
indicated that babies of mothers facing social disadvantages such as
poverty tended to be born with smaller brains than babies whose mothers
had higher household incomes.

MRI scans of full-term newborns born to mothers living in poverty
revealed smaller volumes across the entire brain -- including the cortical
gray matter, subcortical gray matter and white matter -- than found in
the brains of babies whose mothers had higher household incomes. The
brain scans, which were conducted only a few days to weeks after birth,
also showed evidence of less folding of the brain among infants born to
mothers living in poverty. Fewer and shallower folds typically signify
brain immaturity. The healthy human brain folds as it grows and develops, providing the cerebral cortex with a larger functional surface area.

A second study of data from the same sample of 399 mothers and their
babies - - this one published online April 12 in the journal Biological Psychiatry - - reports that pregnant mothers from neighborhoods with high
crime rates gave birth to infants whose brains functioned differently
during their first weeks of life than babies born to mothers living in
safer neighborhoods. Functional MRI scans of babies whose mothers were
exposed to crime displayed weaker connections between brain structures
that process emotions and structures that help regulate and control
those emotions. Maternal stress is believed to be one of the reasons
for the weaker connections in the babies' brains.

"These studies demonstrate that a mother's experiences during pregnancy
can have a major impact on her infant's brain development," said
Christopher D.

Smyser, MD, one of the principal investigators. "Like that old song about
how the 'knee bone is connected to the shin bone,' there's a saying about
the brain that 'areas that fire together wire together.' We're analyzing
how brain regions develop and form early functional networks because how
those structures develop and work together may have a major impact on
long-term development and behavior." Babies in the study were born from
2017 through 2020, before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Smyser,
a professor of neurology, of pediatrics and of radiology, said that to successfully scan newborns during the first few weeks of life, babies are
fed when they arrive for scans because they tend to fall asleep after
eating. They are then snuggly swaddled into blankets and a device that
helps keep them comfortable and still. The brain scans take place while
they sleep.

In the study involving the effects of poverty, the researchers focused
on 280 mothers and their newborns. First author Regina L. Triplett, MD,
a postdoctoral fellow in neurology, had expected to find that maternal
poverty -- referred to in the paper as social disadvantage -- could affect
the babies' developing brains. But she also expected to see effects from psychosocial stress, which includes measures of adverse life experiences
as well as measures of stress and depression.

"Social disadvantage affected the brain across many of its structures,
but there were not significant effects that were related to psychosocial stress," Triplett said. "Our concern is that as babies begin life with
these smaller brain structures, their brains may not develop in as
healthy a way as the brains of babies whose mothers lived in higher
income households." In the second study, which implicated living in
high-crime neighborhoods as a factor in weaker functional connections
in the brains of newborns, first author Rebecca G. Brady, a graduate
student in the university's Medical Scientist Training Program, found
that unlike the effects of poverty, the effects of exposure to crime
were focused on particular areas of the babies' brains.

"Instead of a brain-wide effect, living in a high-crime area during
pregnancy seems to have more specific effects on the emotion-processing
regions of babies' brains," Brady said. "We found that this weakening
of the functional connections between emotion-processing structures in
the babies' brains was very robust when we controlled for other types
of adversity, such as poverty.

It appears that stresses linked to crime had more specific effects
on brain function." Reducing poverty and lowering crime rates are well-established goals of public policy and public health. And the
researchers believe protecting expectant mothers from crime and helping
them out of poverty will do more than improve brain growth and connections
in their babies. But if social programs that aim to help people reach
their full potential are to succeed, the researchers said the policies
must focus on assisting people even before they are born.

"Several research projects around the country are providing money for
living expenses to pregnant mothers now, and some cities have determined
that raising pregnant mothers out of poverty is good public policy,"
Smyser said. "The evidence we're gathering from these studies certainly
would support that idea."

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Washington_University_School_of_Medicine. Original written by Jim
Dryden. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal References:
1. Regina L. Triplett, Rachel E. Lean, Amisha Parikh, J. Philip Miller,
Dimitrios Alexopoulos, Sydney Kaplan, Dominique Meyer, Christopher
Adamson, Tara A. Smyser, Cynthia E. Rogers, Deanna M. Barch,
Barbara Warner, Joan L. Luby, Christopher D. Smyser. Association
of Prenatal Exposure to Early-Life Adversity With Neonatal Brain
Volumes at Birth.

JAMA Network Open, 2022; 5 (4): e227045 DOI: 10.1001/
jamanetworkopen.2022.7045
2. Rebecca G. Brady, Cynthia E. Rogers, Trinidi Prochaska, Sydney
Kaplan,
Rachel E. Lean, Tara A. Smyser, Joshua S. Shimony, George
M. Slavich, Barbara B. Warner, Deanna M. Barch, Joan L. Luby,
Christopher D. Smyser.

The Effects of Prenatal Exposure to Neighborhood Crime on Neonatal
Functional Connectivity. Biological Psychiatry, 2022; DOI: 10.1016/
j.biopsych.2022.01.020 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/04/220412141003.htm

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