A new study provides compelling evidence that growing up in poverty can lead to long-term negative consequences on a child’s brain development, emotional health, and academic achievement.
An emotionally nurturing environment, however, is able to mitigate many of poverty’s negative effects on the developing brain.
The study, conducted by child psychiatrist Joan L. Luby, M.D., at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and her research team, found that low-income children suffer from irregular brain development and lower standardized test scores, with as much as an estimated 20 percent gap in achievement. These developmental delays are attributed mainly to changes in the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain.
[For more of this story, written by Traci Pedersen, go to http://psychcentral.com/news/2...o-poverty/87310.html]
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