Socioeconomic disparities and neuroplasticity: Moving toward adaptation, intersectionality, and inclusion.

Abstract

Childhood socioeconomic status (SES) has far-reaching linkages with children's cognitive and socioemotional development, academic achievement, health, and brain structure and function. Rather than focusing on understandings about the neuroscience of socioeconomic inequality that have recently been reviewed elsewhere, the present article reviews several new directions in the field, beginning first with a consideration of the deficit versus adaptation framework. Although scientists largely agree that socioeconomic disparities in brain development are experience-dependent phenomena rooted in neuroplasticity, historically, such differences have been framed as deficits, which may benefit from intervention. However, emerging research suggests that some developmental differences among children experiencing adversity may alternatively be considered context-appropriate adaptations to the individual's environment. We next discuss how socioeconomic circumstances are inextricably intertwined with race, and consider how measurement of racism and discrimination must be part of a full understanding of the neuroscience of socioeconomic inequality. We argue that scientists must consciously recruit racially and socioeconomically diverse samples-and include measures of SES, race, and discrimination in analyses-to promote a more complete understanding of the neuroplasticity specifically, and psychological science more broadly. We discuss the extent to which researcher and editor positionality have contributed to these problems historically, and conclude by considering paths forward. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).