Socioeconomic status, BMI, and brain development in children

Evan Dennis,Nora D Volkow,Peter Manza

doi:10.1038/s41398-022-01779-3

Abstract

Low socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood is associated with deficits in executive function and changes in cortical morphology. Furthermore, rates of childhood obesity are greater among low SES children and childhood obesity is also associated with cortical alterations and impaired neurocognition, specifically in the domain of executive function. To investigate the influence of BMI on the relationships between SES and both neurocognition and brain morphology, we used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study to construct multiple linear regression models and conduct mediation analyses. Overall, SES as measured by household income, highest level of parental education, and area deprivation, was associated with lower BMI, greater total and prefrontal cortical volume, and better performance on assessments of executive function. Mediation analysis indicated that BMI had a significant indirect effect on associations between area deprivation and both total and prefrontal cortical volumes. BMI also played a mediating role in the associations between area deprivation and composite neurocognitive scores, which were driven by performance on tasks of working memory and cognitive flexibility, but not cognitive control. These findings suggest that BMI should be considered in future studies investigating the relationship between low SES and poor neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Highlights

Socioeconomic disadvantage among children predicts a series of negative outcomes in cognition and academic achievement [1,2,3]
socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with BMI, composite neurocognitive score, and total cortical volume in multiple linear regression models In our individual models, greater Area Deprivation Index (ADI) was significantly related to greater BMI (β = 0.0135, P < 0.001), lower total cortical volume
Because greater BMI has previously been associated with impaired executive function we investigated the relationship of SES with prefrontal cortex volume as well as with three NIH

Summary

Introduction

Socioeconomic disadvantage among children predicts a series of negative outcomes in cognition and academic achievement [1,2,3]. Rates of childhood obesity are prevalent among children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds in the United States and other industrialized countries where low socioeconomic status (SES) populations have access to energy-dense diets [7, 8]. Nutritional and physical characteristics of deprived areas, such as fast-food outlet density and crime rates, may facilitate excessive calorie intake and discourage physical activity among low SES youth [10,11,12]. Childhood and adolescent obesity is associated with a number of deficits in brain structure and cognition. Together, these findings suggest that body weight is an important target for understanding neurodevelopmental outcomes in low socioeconomic youths. The neurodevelopmental consequences of elevated BMI in the context of low SES children are not well characterized

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Results

Conclusion