Disparities in adversity linked to differences in brain structure of Black, white children
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Black children on average undergo more family conflict, material hardship and traumatic events than white children, resulting in differences in gray matter volume in key brain regions and disorders such as PTSD, data show.
Caregivers and parents of Black children had lower income, lower educational attainment and more unemployment compared with those of white children. As a result, the former showed lower amygdala, hippocampus and prefrontal cortex or PFC gray matter volume.
“Structural alterations of these regions are linked to cognitive-affective dysfunction observed in disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder. More granular assessments of structural inequities across racial/ethnic identities are needed for a thorough understanding of their impact on the brain,” Nathalie M. Dumornay, BS, and colleagues wrote. “Together, the present findings may provide insight into potential systemic contributors to disparate rates of psychiatric disease among Black and white individuals in the United States.”
Dumornay and colleagues conducted a study that included 7,350 white children and 1,786 Black children aged 9 to 10 years. Data were pulled from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development, or ABCD Study public data release 2.0. Children were primarily recruited via U.S. public and private schools within the 21 catchment areas, and fewer than 10% were recruited through mailing lists, summer programs and twin registries.
Caregivers and parents self-reported their employment status, family annual income and highest educational attainment at the time of interview. Categories under “unemployed” included: temporarily laid off, disabled, not looking for work or looking for work; categories under “employed” included student, stay-at-home parent, maternity leave, working now or sick leave. Caregivers and parents also reported demographic history, material hardship and trauma history. Family conflict was assessed with the family conflict subscale of the Youth Family Environment Scale, which consists of nine items that assess physical and emotional conflicts in the home as completed by the children.
The researchers wrote that, on average, Black and white children differed in family income, parental educational attainment and parent employment status; parents of white children were three times more likely to be employed compared with parents of Black children. 75.2% of parents of white children had a college degree, and 40.6% of parents of Black children had a college degree. In addition, 88.1% of parents of white children made $35,000 or less compared with 46.7% of parents of Black children. White children experienced less material hardship, family conflict, neighborhood disadvantage and fewer traumatic events compared with Black children.
Dumornay and colleagues reported that white children showed greater gray matter volumes in the amygdala, hippocampus, frontal pole, superior frontal gyrus, rostral anterior cingulate, pars opercularis, pars orbitalis, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, caudal middle frontal gyrus and caudal anterior cingulate, and smaller gray matter volume compared with Black children in the pars triangularis (all P < 0.001).
“The aims of the analysis were clearly intended to begin to elucidate and correct the long history of reporting of differences in health, behavioral and neural outcomes attributed to race and/or ethnicity,” Deanna M. Barch, PhD, and Joan L. Luby, MD, both of the department of psychiatry at Washington University, wrote in an accompanying commentary. “These old models generally failed to appreciate and account for the powerful effects of the psychosocial environment on biological processes, including brain development, drawing oversimplified false conclusions about biological differences attributed to race. The negative social effects of these erroneous inferences are obvious and damaging.”