Inequality in Children's Brain Development - UC Davis Center for Poverty Research

Friday, February 23, 2018 - 3:10pm- 4:30pm | 2203 SS&H, Andrews Conference Room

Kimberly Noble, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Education, Columbia University

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Dr. Kimberly Noble is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist and pediatrician who studies socioeconomic disparities in children’s neurocognitive development. She received her undergraduate, graduate, and medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and trained at the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. She completed her pediatrics residency at Columbia University Medical Center/Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York Presbyterian.

From Dr. Noble:  Children who live in poverty tend to perform worse than peers in school on a bevy of different tests. They are less likely to graduate from high school and then continue on to college and are more apt to be underemployed once they enter the workforce.

Research that crosses neuroscience with sociology has begun to show that educational and occupational disadvantages that result from growing up poor can lead to significant differences in the size, shape and functioning of children's brains.

Poverty's potential to hijack normal brain development has led to plans for studying whether a simple intervention might reverse these injurious effects. A study now in the planning stages will explore if a modest subsidy can enhance brain health.