Kimberly Noble, a neuroscientist and pediatrician at Columbia University, clicked a remote on a TED Talks stage in New York last January and a screen beside her displayed what looked like a craggy, grey leftover snowbank. The image was an average of the brains of 1,099 children and adolescents she and her collaborators studied for a 2015 paper that received enormous attention.
They used MRI imaging and paid particular attention to the cerebral cortex, the wrinkly outer layer of the brain ?that does most of the cognitive heavy lifting,? Noble explained. A larger surface area has been linked to higher intelligence.
The researchers found one characteristic associated with cortical surface area: ?That factor was family income,? she said. And that link was especially pronounced in the areas of the brain that govern language skills such as vocabulary and reading, and self-regulation skills like avoiding distraction. ?Those are the very skills that children living in poverty are most likely to struggle with,? Noble noted. ?In fact, a child living with poverty is likely to perform worse on tests of language and impulse control before they even turn two.?
It has long been established that low-income kids lag in school, but until recently, there was no research explaining why. It was as though everyone knew poor kids emerged from the forest of childhood at a different point than their more affluent peers, but no one had thought to trace back their path through the woods. Noble?s...