In many ways, poverty can be considered a kind of disease. It is often hereditary. Sometimes contagious. Certainly treatable, but all too often overlooked. And just like a disease, it changes our health for the worse, shortens life and negatively affects its quality. That's not all, because apparently poverty, and more generally life in more disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions, seem to somehow accelerate the aging of the brain, negatively impacting cognitive abilities. The confirmation comes from a study by the University of Lausanne and the University of Geneva, recently published in the pages of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Poverty and health
Research on the relationship between poverty and health has been going on for decades. And it has long been shown that poverty increases the risk of dying younger, suffering from cardiovascular problems, obesity, diabetes, and many other chronic conditions. There are obviously many causes: those with less economic resources tend to have more limited access to health services, to suffer more easily from disorders such as anxiety and depression, to follow a less healthy diet (because healthy food costs more), for being more sedentary and having dangerous habits such as smoking or excessive alcohol consumption.
The brain is also affected by the effects of poverty: in fact, various studies have now demonstrated an association between disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions and worse cognitive performance in adult life and in old age. It is not yet clear, however, which brain structures are implicated in this phenomenon: how poverty is linked to the functioning, morphology and poorer performance of the central nervous system. And that's where the new research comes in.
I study
The research involved 751 adults between 50 and 90 years old, whose brains were studied in depth using magnetic resonance imaging and who were administered tests to evaluate cognitive functions. After adjusting the results to take into account age, gender and major health disorders that can affect brain functioning, the researchers identified a link between what they call “exposure to disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions” and some evidence of a premature aging of the so-called white matter, i.e. the part of the brain and spinal cord that contains the nerve fibers that connect the neurons to each other. Furthermore, as in previous research, lower financial resources were linked to worse results in cognitive tests.
The premature aging of white matter that emerged in the research is linked to a reduction in the quantity of nerve fibers (or rather axons) that branch off from each neuron in the brain, as well as the loss of the myelin sheath that protects them. The study does not yet offer further information on the causes of these changes at the brain level, but according to its authors it represents an important starting point to study more thoroughly the effects of poverty and other environmental factors on the microstructures that make up our brain .
Interestingly, the observed changes in white matter were linked to worsening cognitive test results in people from more disadvantaged backgrounds, but showed no effects in rich or wealthy participants. In some ways, then, economic affluence seems to protect against cognitive decline, even when the brain begins to show the signs of aging. Another intriguing phenomenon, to be explored further in the future with new research.