8 ms·

What Poverty Does to the Young Brain

95 points by akbarnama 11y ago

louithethrid 11y ago
To sum it up- poverty brings you the experience of a thirld world enviroment. Constant stress and existential crisis/dread. Can you write a app for that? One where creatures in crisis find other creatures in crisis nearby, forming a add-hoc anti-stress community that also teaches itself the basics to startup society against all odds?
- clsec 11y ago
  Extreme poverty, especially where violence is involved (common), is likely to cause symptoms of PTSD. So I'm not so sure about forming an ad-hoc anti-stress community. Currently the only thing that could be compared to that would be a mental health clinic. Which I would think would be a much healthier approach than putting a bunch of PTSD sufferers together in an ad-hoc manner.
- dannypgh 11y ago
  You've basically just described street organizations (gangs), which needed no app to be created. Maybe you can end their criminalization, end the war on drugs, or figure out a way to create gang unity with am app?
- Filthy_casual 11y ago
  The problem with that is: Once you build this service, how do you give access to the impoverished people? For instance, I would be homeless sleeping on benches if not for my parents and my computer is almost 8 years old, my mobile phone is over a decade old. I would seek people who feel like I do but they also look after themselves first, since the conditions are "eat or get eaten". There was also one guy who just surrendered to his fate and all he did was abuse the fact that his parents provide him with a soft pillow to stand, only to play video games day in and day out. The very definition of NEET. My point being, someone else has to provide them with internet access, and even then, there is not much that you can do.
  - rancur 11y ago
    we have obamaphone. now we have obama-app
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  To sum it up- poverty brings you the experience of a thirld world enviroment. Western poverty does not do this. Most folks suffering western style poverty have an abundance of food, clean water, power, sanitation, leisure, education and health care. Having just come back from India, it's not even a close comparison. Any stress/existential crisis/dread is purely based on status envy or pathologies caused by other (relatively) poor westerners.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    This kind of judgmental appeal to worse problems is completely counterproductive to solving western poverty, and ignores those who do not have access to abundant food, leisure, and health care. This can happen for a number of reasons, including stigmatization of welfare assistance, lack of awareness of available programs, incomes too high to qualify for aid but too low to live on (especially for those poor who do not have children), medical conditions that prevent one from reaching the social services before 5PM close (even things as simple and unappreciated as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, delayed sleep phase, and PTSD), or lack of transportation ($5 for food, or for bus/gasoline?).
- a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
  There's been a bunch of research on Korean War orphans adopted to the West. Kids literally stunted from malnutrition, and traumatized by the direct experience of war as well as the death of their parents and families. As adults they test higher for intelligence than the native occidental populations they joined. Take that for what it's worth.
  - rancur 11y ago
    > they test higher for intelligence than oh, why?
- task_queue 11y ago
  You are looking in the wrong direction for a solution. The world doesn't need another * social app.
  - Nicholas_C 11y ago
    The comment you're replying to almost seems satirical in nature but I cant be sure. Poe's law in effect.
    - task_queue 11y ago
      I desperately want to agree, but this is HN. The other week someone suggested an app that gamified escaping homelessness as a solution to homelessness.
dschiptsov 11y ago
It depends.. I spent my childhood riding fright trains, visiting every dump and basically coming home only to sleep. I don't regret. Another common situation, is when parents or relatives or mere circumstances are forced children to perform some very restricted, repetitive tasks, like agricultural jobs or any other kind of dumb labor. This is usually a disaster. Add to this a constant abuse, social pressure and wrong, primitive conditioning, especially for girls, to complicate the matters. Basically, unless one is lucky enough to be a lonely street kid, not a member of some gang, to develop a habit of reflective thinking and acquiring knowledge by understanding the causes of events, one will end up what they call "developmental delay", or just aggressive ignorance. BTW, some Eastern countries, where there are most population are poor, there are much less problem in urban areas, where kids could escape restricted repetition of rural life in poverty.
- dschiptsov 11y ago
  OK. According to non-meme based psychology, there are two major developmental factors - genes and environment, your parents and your neighborhood, nature and nurture. Leaving leaving genes aside, environmental factors consists of conditioning - social, cultural, of personal experiences and of chance events. There is nothing but conditioning and nutrition that accounts for a development. The conditioning is vastly complex and highly interrelated, but it boils down to the variety and 'intencity' of experience. Common sense tells us that a brain is a muscle - it must be trained and nourished. Any impoverishment results it failure to develop appropriate habits and skills, which later will handicap one's performance compared to the members of favourable social classes. The point is, any external causes, such as developmental disorders aside, poverty leaves one developmentaly delayed due to restricted, repetitive behavior and wrong conditioning. In some Eastern societies, like Indian and of most Buddhist counties, with emphasis on community and family rather than individuality and competition, the effect of poverty is less dramatic. Poor of India or Nepal or Cambodia are incomparable better that those of Russia, which is a social shithole, famous of its ignorance and cruelty amongst its poor.
Joeboy 11y ago
> Over the past decade, the scientific consensus has become clear: poverty perpetuates poverty, generation after generation, by acting on the brain. Is that true? It sounds rather controversial to me, but I am not a neuroeconomist. Edit: Although, I suppose that sentence makes no claim as to how large the effect is in relation to other systemic problems, so maybe it's not as bold a claim as I first thought.
- zo1 11y ago
  Well, I do believe we treat people in poverty (or poor people) differently than we do others. Both in our personal interactions with them, and how we deal with them as a social-group or problem (see, I myself used the term "deal with them"). The underlying theme that is quite pervasive in the media and through social programs: "If you are poor, you can not help yourself out of it, you need to be helped". I think that basic tone/message is a large contributing factor to perpetuating poverty, and conditioning them into not attempting to enact positive change in their own behavior.
- kranner 11y ago
  Book recommendation: Scarcity by Mullainathan and Shafir which discusses "scarcity traps" at length, esp. in the case of poverty, but also in other contexts (such as time scarcity for busy people, food scarcity for dieters, socialization scarcity for lonely people, etc.): http://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Science-Having-Defines-Lives/dp/125005611X http://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Science-Having-Defines-Lives/...
  - Joeboy 11y ago
    It doesn't seem controversial that poverty can lead to worse education, negative behaviours and overall worse outcomes eg. due to things like stress, altered priorities, prejudice etc. The idea that this is because poor people sustain brain damage as children (or foetuses) is the bit I'm not sure about.
    - kranner 11y ago
      I think I misread your comment by skipping the effect-on-the-brain bit. The book is indeed about altered priorities and resultant behaviour due to scarcity, but it is a good read anyway.
flycaliguy 11y ago
The effects of poverty on a child's IQ are at this point indisputable. (Duncan et al. 1998) Chronically inadequate diet in the early stages of development will disrupt brain development. Missing meals will impair functioning and learning on the day of. These kids see reduced access to health services and often all around inadequate parenting from overworked and stressed guardians. In ALL countries that have been studied, children with wealthy homes score higher on IQ tests than kids from poor homes (Case, Griffin, & Kelly; Keating & Hertzman, 1999). Also of interest is that in the US and developed countries in which the gap is widest, the differences in IQ is much larger than in countries with a smaller wealth gap. Some kids overcome this challenge. They are the "resilient children" and their ability usually came from a shielding of negative influence through quality parenting or guardianship. Be careful not to absorb the narrative of these achieving kids and dismiss the very real effects of low SES on children.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  You are not accounting for the fact that IQ is heritable, one of the more obvious truths we're tempted to ignore. Pinker's The Blank Slate is a good book on the topic. At this point improving nutrition does not add much to IQ. Ours is a well fed nation. Soon, the cheapest means of raising IQ will be iterated embryo selection, later direct genetic modification. Iterated embryo selection could raise IQ by 80 points:http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf I look forward to when Singapore makes it available to its citizens and ideologues here try to insist that vitamins will do the same.
  - flycaliguy 11y ago
    Interesting point on heritability. I wonder though if poor populations are full of genetically assisted high IQs that are being suppressed through the effects of poverty. Improving nutrition among poor kids will do a lot to improve cognitive functioning. I'm not sure you can claim that "our's is a well fed nation" in a discussion of the effects of poverty. I've been involved in breakfast programs in high schools and the number of kids coming to school unfed is significant. There are poor kids in developed nations suffering the effects of malnutrition and it is impairing their development. Low energy, susceptibility to illness, infection and even physical growth delays. Low SES is a multifaceted attack on a kid's start in life and poor nutrition is just the jab to the gut.
autokad 11y ago
"In the nineteen-nineties, during the media panic over “crack babies,” he was among a number of scientists who questioned whether the danger of cocaine exposure in utero was being overstated. (Levitt spent two decades examining the brains of rabbit mothers and their offspring that were dosed with the drug, and says that the alarm was “an exaggeration.”" I been telling people that for years, but people get super defensive and wont even consider that's a possibility.
threatofrain 11y ago
I think it is unfortunate when people do not express their biological potential, but I'm not sure that's what people actually want to talk about. I'm not sure that really improves the human condition. I see the problem as the sum of human economic actions creating a structure where only a few people can win and most people must lose. What does it matter if we bump up people's IQ? Would that make it so that more people try to apply to be leaders and CEO's of tomorrow, when there are so few positions available? Is the lack of meritocracy the principle emotional bother here? Does society become better if it were meritocratic? I don't think so. Why not focus on the fact that there's a race where only a few people win? Is it because we're okay with the current distribution of wealth if we find out that it corresponds with intelligence? All I see from this is a more efficient nation due to better labor allocation, which is an agreeable value, but is that what people wanted to talk about? Economic inefficiency due to bad labor allocation? I think GATTACA shows a meritocratic world. A very meritocratic world. Now, it may be that the movie has some moral message to deliver on "true potential" being more than biology, but that society was largely on target with identifying potential, at least way better than our current world. A few errors now and then sounds very tolerable for a futuristic system, even if it results in a few tragic stories about a denied astronaut with heart problems. I'm sure they can improve and become even more accurate at identifying aspects of human merit. But in that world, we have corporate dominance of working opportunities, elite rule over inferior biology, a feeling of fate, and shitty jobs -- a world of winners and losers. There will always be more people of merit than there will be jobs of merit. If this last statement is true, what are the implications for the losers of society?
- iamcurious 11y ago
  There will always be more people of merit than there will be jobs of merit. If this last statement is true, what are the implications for the losers of society? This makes me think of the Hunter S. Thompson letter posted a few days ago[1]: Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH. [1] http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/hunter-s-thompson-life-coach-tips-for-finding-meaning-in-life.html http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/hunter-s-thompson-life-co...
Rylinks 11y ago
>The DNA samples allowed the scientists to factor out the influence of genetic heritage That's a pretty impressive achievement
skidoo 11y ago
If your mommy and daddy pay your bills, it does not mean you have any smarts about you. I am reading some thoroughly biased comments here. Money is for people without skill, more often than not.
toolsadmin 11y ago
"The DNA samples allowed the scientists to factor out the influence of genetic heritage and look more closely at how socioeconomic status affects a growing brain." Right...
cyphunk 11y ago
Didn't we already try the theories of "differing brain size means <insert_gender,race,etc_here>" in the past? Any time I hear "fMRI" I feel a hidden tinge of Phrenology trying to pull itself back from the grave of pseudoscience. In this article I started to wonder here: As might be expected, more educated families produced children with greater brain surface area and a more voluminous hippocampus. But income had its own distinct effect: living in the lowest bracket left children with up to six per cent less brain surface area than children from high-income families. "As might be expected"? Meaning we naturally expect a difference in any form of the brain to give merit and reason to any argument toward difference. I fully support the idea that scarcity and other social environment issues create toxic effect on human development. However, I'm first curious if the statistical variance of research referenced in the article merits the tone of the article, and secondly where if at all does the size of this or that part of the brain provide less muddied proofs. I think basing important arguments on risky science (bordering pseudo-science in some applications) is counter-productive. Actually, unless a large statistical variance is shown, the argument of surface amount or size of hippocampus is absolute hogwash. You might as well say women are paid % less per $ then men because the size of their brain is % less. Related: "Seduction without cause: uncovering explanatory neurophilia" [1] "The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations" [2] "Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction" [3] 1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661308001563 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661308... 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2778755/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2778755/ 3. http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf
pvaldes 11y ago
Is not so simple in fact. Twins with similar diets can have differences in IQ just by growing in different cities. Between 20 and 40 Ascaris roundworms in the body of a child can lower their IQ to 5-10 points, delay the psychomotor development and end in poor growth until properly treated (IQ is restored them to normal levels). Powerty can mean that people don't have a reliable source of water, or feels fine about eating roadkills because is in their culture (increasing the probability of having roundworms or other parasites from carnivores). A bad Malaria in children can lead to permanent low IQs also. Any research about this question should check and discuss parasite loads also. Further readings: Eppig, Fincher and Thornhill (2010), Parasite Prevalence and the Worldwide Distribution of Cognitive Ability., Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277(1701): 3801-3808 Christensen & Eslick (2015). Cerebral malaria as a risk factor for the development of epilepsy and other long-term neurological conditions: a meta-analysis. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 109(4):233-8. http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2010/06/do-parasites-make-you-dumber http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2010/06/do-parasit... http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/sickle-cell-anemia-can-lead-to-lower-iq-scores-study-shows/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/sickle-cell...

95 points by akbarnama 11y ago

To sum it up- poverty brings you the experience of a thirld world enviroment. Constant stress and existential crisis/dread. Can you write a app for that? One where creatures in crisis find other creatures in crisis nearby, forming a add-hoc anti-stress community that also teaches itself the basics to startup society against all odds?

clsec 11y ago
Extreme poverty, especially where violence is involved (common), is likely to cause symptoms of PTSD. So I'm not so sure about forming an ad-hoc anti-stress community. Currently the only thing that could be compared to that would be a mental health clinic. Which I would think would be a much healthier approach than putting a bunch of PTSD sufferers together in an ad-hoc manner.
dannypgh 11y ago
You've basically just described street organizations (gangs), which needed no app to be created. Maybe you can end their criminalization, end the war on drugs, or figure out a way to create gang unity with am app?
Filthy_casual 11y ago
The problem with that is: Once you build this service, how do you give access to the impoverished people? For instance, I would be homeless sleeping on benches if not for my parents and my computer is almost 8 years old, my mobile phone is over a decade old. I would seek people who feel like I do but they also look after themselves first, since the conditions are "eat or get eaten". There was also one guy who just surrendered to his fate and all he did was abuse the fact that his parents provide him with a soft pillow to stand, only to play video games day in and day out. The very definition of NEET. My point being, someone else has to provide them with internet access, and even then, there is not much that you can do.
- rancur 11y ago
  we have obamaphone. now we have obama-app
yummyfajitas 11y ago
To sum it up- poverty brings you the experience of a thirld world enviroment. Western poverty does not do this. Most folks suffering western style poverty have an abundance of food, clean water, power, sanitation, leisure, education and health care. Having just come back from India, it's not even a close comparison. Any stress/existential crisis/dread is purely based on status envy or pathologies caused by other (relatively) poor westerners.
- nitrogen 11y ago
  This kind of judgmental appeal to worse problems is completely counterproductive to solving western poverty, and ignores those who do not have access to abundant food, leisure, and health care. This can happen for a number of reasons, including stigmatization of welfare assistance, lack of awareness of available programs, incomes too high to qualify for aid but too low to live on (especially for those poor who do not have children), medical conditions that prevent one from reaching the social services before 5PM close (even things as simple and unappreciated as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, delayed sleep phase, and PTSD), or lack of transportation ($5 for food, or for bus/gasoline?).
a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
There's been a bunch of research on Korean War orphans adopted to the West. Kids literally stunted from malnutrition, and traumatized by the direct experience of war as well as the death of their parents and families. As adults they test higher for intelligence than the native occidental populations they joined. Take that for what it's worth.
- rancur 11y ago
  > they test higher for intelligence than oh, why?
task_queue 11y ago
You are looking in the wrong direction for a solution. The world doesn't need another * social app.
- Nicholas_C 11y ago
  The comment you're replying to almost seems satirical in nature but I cant be sure. Poe's law in effect.
  - task_queue 11y ago
    I desperately want to agree, but this is HN. The other week someone suggested an app that gamified escaping homelessness as a solution to homelessness.

dschiptsov 11y ago

It depends.. I spent my childhood riding fright trains, visiting every dump and basically coming home only to sleep. I don't regret. Another common situation, is when parents or relatives or mere circumstances are forced children to perform some very restricted, repetitive tasks, like agricultural jobs or any other kind of dumb labor. This is usually a disaster. Add to this a constant abuse, social pressure and wrong, primitive conditioning, especially for girls, to complicate the matters. Basically, unless one is lucky enough to be a lonely street kid, not a member of some gang, to develop a habit of reflective thinking and acquiring knowledge by understanding the causes of events, one will end up what they call "developmental delay", or just aggressive ignorance. BTW, some Eastern countries, where there are most population are poor, there are much less problem in urban areas, where kids could escape restricted repetition of rural life in poverty.

dschiptsov 11y ago
OK. According to non-meme based psychology, there are two major developmental factors - genes and environment, your parents and your neighborhood, nature and nurture. Leaving leaving genes aside, environmental factors consists of conditioning - social, cultural, of personal experiences and of chance events. There is nothing but conditioning and nutrition that accounts for a development. The conditioning is vastly complex and highly interrelated, but it boils down to the variety and 'intencity' of experience. Common sense tells us that a brain is a muscle - it must be trained and nourished. Any impoverishment results it failure to develop appropriate habits and skills, which later will handicap one's performance compared to the members of favourable social classes. The point is, any external causes, such as developmental disorders aside, poverty leaves one developmentaly delayed due to restricted, repetitive behavior and wrong conditioning. In some Eastern societies, like Indian and of most Buddhist counties, with emphasis on community and family rather than individuality and competition, the effect of poverty is less dramatic. Poor of India or Nepal or Cambodia are incomparable better that those of Russia, which is a social shithole, famous of its ignorance and cruelty amongst its poor.

Joeboy 11y ago

> Over the past decade, the scientific consensus has become clear: poverty perpetuates poverty, generation after generation, by acting on the brain. Is that true? It sounds rather controversial to me, but I am not a neuroeconomist. Edit: Although, I suppose that sentence makes no claim as to how large the effect is in relation to other systemic problems, so maybe it's not as bold a claim as I first thought.

zo1 11y ago
Well, I do believe we treat people in poverty (or poor people) differently than we do others. Both in our personal interactions with them, and how we deal with them as a social-group or problem (see, I myself used the term "deal with them"). The underlying theme that is quite pervasive in the media and through social programs: "If you are poor, you can not help yourself out of it, you need to be helped". I think that basic tone/message is a large contributing factor to perpetuating poverty, and conditioning them into not attempting to enact positive change in their own behavior.
kranner 11y ago
Book recommendation: Scarcity by Mullainathan and Shafir which discusses "scarcity traps" at length, esp. in the case of poverty, but also in other contexts (such as time scarcity for busy people, food scarcity for dieters, socialization scarcity for lonely people, etc.): http://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Science-Having-Defines-Lives/dp/125005611X http://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Science-Having-Defines-Lives/...
- Joeboy 11y ago
  It doesn't seem controversial that poverty can lead to worse education, negative behaviours and overall worse outcomes eg. due to things like stress, altered priorities, prejudice etc. The idea that this is because poor people sustain brain damage as children (or foetuses) is the bit I'm not sure about.
  - kranner 11y ago
    I think I misread your comment by skipping the effect-on-the-brain bit. The book is indeed about altered priorities and resultant behaviour due to scarcity, but it is a good read anyway.

flycaliguy 11y ago

The effects of poverty on a child's IQ are at this point indisputable. (Duncan et al. 1998) Chronically inadequate diet in the early stages of development will disrupt brain development. Missing meals will impair functioning and learning on the day of. These kids see reduced access to health services and often all around inadequate parenting from overworked and stressed guardians. In ALL countries that have been studied, children with wealthy homes score higher on IQ tests than kids from poor homes (Case, Griffin, & Kelly; Keating & Hertzman, 1999). Also of interest is that in the US and developed countries in which the gap is widest, the differences in IQ is much larger than in countries with a smaller wealth gap. Some kids overcome this challenge. They are the "resilient children" and their ability usually came from a shielding of negative influence through quality parenting or guardianship. Be careful not to absorb the narrative of these achieving kids and dismiss the very real effects of low SES on children.

Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
You are not accounting for the fact that IQ is heritable, one of the more obvious truths we're tempted to ignore. Pinker's The Blank Slate is a good book on the topic. At this point improving nutrition does not add much to IQ. Ours is a well fed nation. Soon, the cheapest means of raising IQ will be iterated embryo selection, later direct genetic modification. Iterated embryo selection could raise IQ by 80 points:http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf I look forward to when Singapore makes it available to its citizens and ideologues here try to insist that vitamins will do the same.
- flycaliguy 11y ago
  Interesting point on heritability. I wonder though if poor populations are full of genetically assisted high IQs that are being suppressed through the effects of poverty. Improving nutrition among poor kids will do a lot to improve cognitive functioning. I'm not sure you can claim that "our's is a well fed nation" in a discussion of the effects of poverty. I've been involved in breakfast programs in high schools and the number of kids coming to school unfed is significant. There are poor kids in developed nations suffering the effects of malnutrition and it is impairing their development. Low energy, susceptibility to illness, infection and even physical growth delays. Low SES is a multifaceted attack on a kid's start in life and poor nutrition is just the jab to the gut.

autokad 11y ago

"In the nineteen-nineties, during the media panic over “crack babies,” he was among a number of scientists who questioned whether the danger of cocaine exposure in utero was being overstated. (Levitt spent two decades examining the brains of rabbit mothers and their offspring that were dosed with the drug, and says that the alarm was “an exaggeration.”" I been telling people that for years, but people get super defensive and wont even consider that's a possibility.

threatofrain 11y ago

I think it is unfortunate when people do not express their biological potential, but I'm not sure that's what people actually want to talk about. I'm not sure that really improves the human condition. I see the problem as the sum of human economic actions creating a structure where only a few people can win and most people must lose. What does it matter if we bump up people's IQ? Would that make it so that more people try to apply to be leaders and CEO's of tomorrow, when there are so few positions available? Is the lack of meritocracy the principle emotional bother here? Does society become better if it were meritocratic? I don't think so. Why not focus on the fact that there's a race where only a few people win? Is it because we're okay with the current distribution of wealth if we find out that it corresponds with intelligence? All I see from this is a more efficient nation due to better labor allocation, which is an agreeable value, but is that what people wanted to talk about? Economic inefficiency due to bad labor allocation? I think GATTACA shows a meritocratic world. A very meritocratic world. Now, it may be that the movie has some moral message to deliver on "true potential" being more than biology, but that society was largely on target with identifying potential, at least way better than our current world. A few errors now and then sounds very tolerable for a futuristic system, even if it results in a few tragic stories about a denied astronaut with heart problems. I'm sure they can improve and become even more accurate at identifying aspects of human merit. But in that world, we have corporate dominance of working opportunities, elite rule over inferior biology, a feeling of fate, and shitty jobs -- a world of winners and losers. There will always be more people of merit than there will be jobs of merit. If this last statement is true, what are the implications for the losers of society?

iamcurious 11y ago
There will always be more people of merit than there will be jobs of merit. If this last statement is true, what are the implications for the losers of society? This makes me think of the Hunter S. Thompson letter posted a few days ago[1]: Let’s assume that you think you have a choice of eight paths to follow (all pre-defined paths, of course). And let’s assume that you can’t see any real purpose in any of the eight. THEN— and here is the essence of all I’ve said— you MUST FIND A NINTH PATH. [1] http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/hunter-s-thompson-life-coach-tips-for-finding-meaning-in-life.html http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/hunter-s-thompson-life-co...

Rylinks 11y ago

>The DNA samples allowed the scientists to factor out the influence of genetic heritage That's a pretty impressive achievement

skidoo 11y ago

If your mommy and daddy pay your bills, it does not mean you have any smarts about you. I am reading some thoroughly biased comments here. Money is for people without skill, more often than not.

toolsadmin 11y ago

"The DNA samples allowed the scientists to factor out the influence of genetic heritage and look more closely at how socioeconomic status affects a growing brain." Right...

cyphunk 11y ago

Didn't we already try the theories of "differing brain size means <insert_gender,race,etc_here>" in the past? Any time I hear "fMRI" I feel a hidden tinge of Phrenology trying to pull itself back from the grave of pseudoscience. In this article I started to wonder here: As might be expected, more educated families produced children with greater brain surface area and a more voluminous hippocampus. But income had its own distinct effect: living in the lowest bracket left children with up to six per cent less brain surface area than children from high-income families. "As might be expected"? Meaning we naturally expect a difference in any form of the brain to give merit and reason to any argument toward difference. I fully support the idea that scarcity and other social environment issues create toxic effect on human development. However, I'm first curious if the statistical variance of research referenced in the article merits the tone of the article, and secondly where if at all does the size of this or that part of the brain provide less muddied proofs. I think basing important arguments on risky science (bordering pseudo-science in some applications) is counter-productive. Actually, unless a large statistical variance is shown, the argument of surface amount or size of hippocampus is absolute hogwash. You might as well say women are paid % less per $ then men because the size of their brain is % less. Related: "Seduction without cause: uncovering explanatory neurophilia" [1] "The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations" [2] "Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction" [3] 1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661308001563 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661308... 2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2778755/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2778755/ 3. http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf

pvaldes 11y ago

Is not so simple in fact. Twins with similar diets can have differences in IQ just by growing in different cities. Between 20 and 40 Ascaris roundworms in the body of a child can lower their IQ to 5-10 points, delay the psychomotor development and end in poor growth until properly treated (IQ is restored them to normal levels). Powerty can mean that people don't have a reliable source of water, or feels fine about eating roadkills because is in their culture (increasing the probability of having roundworms or other parasites from carnivores). A bad Malaria in children can lead to permanent low IQs also. Any research about this question should check and discuss parasite loads also. Further readings: Eppig, Fincher and Thornhill (2010), Parasite Prevalence and the Worldwide Distribution of Cognitive Ability., Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277(1701): 3801-3808 Christensen & Eslick (2015). Cerebral malaria as a risk factor for the development of epilepsy and other long-term neurological conditions: a meta-analysis. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 109(4):233-8. http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2010/06/do-parasites-make-you-dumber http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2010/06/do-parasit... http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/sickle-cell-anemia-can-lead-to-lower-iq-scores-study-shows/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/sickle-cell...