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Can parents’ income affect the child’s brain size?

A new experiment has shown that a family’s socioeconomic status is related with the dimension of child’s brain irrespective of hereditary, race and other factors.

The parents’ financial position really matters in the shape and size of brain, apart from its development.

According to the study published online in the Nature Neuroscience journal, low salary of parents or a low middle class family less earning can have uneven effect on child’s brain size.

"We’ve known for a long time that cognitive development, school performance and productivity in adult life can be impacted by socioeconomic status, but now we’re actually seeing it in the brain,” said Elizabeth Sowell, a developmental neuroscientist at the Saban Research Institute at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

Study is yet to define the factors associated with low income that determines the brain growth.

“Money can buy better education, homes in areas further away from freeways; It can buy guitar lessons. It can buy after-school programs; it can buy better healthcare, better nutrition," Sowell said. "It’s all of those things that money can buy that lead to more enriched experiences for children in wealthier families.”

The pediatric database having a history of more than 1000 young people, aged from 3 to 20 showed that income accounted more for the variation in surface area of brain, instead of parents’ education.

-Smrutirekha