A new study is shedding light on how environmental factors, like financial struggles, can impact the quality of white matter in a developing child’s brain.
While previous studies have focused more on gray matter, tissues typically comprised of the cell bodies of neurons that process information, the latest research looked more closely at white matter, the nerve fibers that facilitate communication between different regions of the brain. The researchers discovered that nearly all of the dozens of assessed factors, like parental substance abuse and neighborhood safety, impacted the formation of the structure of white matter.
“It’s a really impressive, compelling paper about the long-term consequences of growing up in undersupported environments,” said John Gabrieli, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study, per Science.
The team of researchers led by Sofia Carozza at Brigham and Women’s Hospital examined data from over 9,000 participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. The ABCD is the most extensive longitudinal study of brain development, covering a representative group of American children.
In the ABCD Study, participants and their parents provided data on their home environment, such as household income. Later, at age 9 or 10, the participants underwent a form of MRI that measured water movement in their brains. This assessment provided insight into the strength and organization of the children’s white matter fiber bundles and whether deterioration was present.
Two years after the MRI, a language test was also given, followed by a math test a year later.
Combined, the team analyzed the link between the quality of 73 white matter tracts in the brain and the results of the ABCD data. The authors found that 72 out of the 73 tracts were impacted by the assessed factors, such as a parent’s level of education.
Trauma and measures of social vulnerability, like a child’s housing quality, were found to be the two most significant drivers of deteriorated white matter. In turn, this increased prevalence of damaged white matter was correlated with trouble grasping languages and performing math problems.
The study also noted that protective factors that promote healthy white matter development include children living in a home with both parents and a high household income. Loving and attentive parents were also correlated with higher-quality white matter.