DEEP IMPACTS

摘要

The first 1000 days of life are a busy time for the growing brain. An impoverished environment can have a lasting impact. 1 The pref rental cortex is behind much of our thinking and reasoning. Children born to parents with lower educational achievements tend to have thinner prefrontal cortices, which may explain why they are worse at filtering out distractions while they work - a skill specific to this brain region. 2 The hippocampus is responsible for learning and memory. Kids who had poor parental support in early childhood show signs of a smaller hippocampus by the time they reach school age. 3 A smaller amygdala, a structure that handles our emotions, has been associated with children from low-income homes or born to parents with less education. 4 During our early years, different regions of our brains start to specialise in certain tasks. Word tasks are delegated to the left side of the brain, in particular to Broca's area. But fMRI scans of 5-year-olds found that the brains of those from disadvantaged backgrounds weren't as specialised as their high-income counterparts. 5 MRI scans of children under S found that those from low-income families had lower volumes of grey matter in their frontal and parietal lobes, which are associated with working memory and language, among other things.