The resilient brain against childhood poverty

Abstract

AbstractPoverty remains a persistent structural issue in society, profoundly impacting children’s mental health and resilience. However, the influence of poverty on children’s resilience and its neural underpinnings is not well understood. This study investigates this impact using a nationally representative sample (N = 11878) and neuroimaging techniques to explore the heterogeneity of resilience mechanisms in poor children. Our findings reveal that poor children (living below the federal poverty threshold) experience exacerbated effects of early life adversities (ELAs) on behavioral problems, which persist into adolescence, indicating disrupted resilience. By subtyping poor children based on neural representations of self-regulation (brain activation during stop signal task), we identified two distinct subtypes: subtype-1, with heightened neural activation, exhibited significantly worse resilience; while subtype-2, with reduced activation, showed resilience levels comparable to non-poor children. Two subtypes did not differ significantly in superficial characteristics including ELA exposure and demographics. However, poor children with subtype-1 had thicker left-middle-frontal-gyrus (L-MFG) brain regions, correlating with fewer behavioral problems and weaker ELA impacts, suggesting a unique resilience mechanism. This L-MFG-based resilience mechanism is exclusive to subtype-1, and not observed in subtype-2 or non-poor children. These findings underscore the importance of understanding individual heterogeneity in resilience mechanisms among disadvantaged children. Our study emphasizes the need for future research to delve deeper into adaptation processes to ELAs and poverty, advocating for the exploration of varied resilience mechanisms to mitigate the stigma associated with poverty and guide interventions aimed at narrowing mental health gradient.