USA: researchers find differences in the brains of black and/or poor children. Postulating that genetic differences cannot be significant, they conclude that the causes are trauma related to racism and poverty

“We don’t think the explanation is simple and that white people have categorically different brains than black people. We really think it’s due to the different experiences these groups have,” said the study’s lead researcher.

MRI scans have revealed how the impact of “toxic stress” caused by racism and poverty on the brains of black children can impact mental health later in life.

A study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry found that disparities in eight of fourteen brain areas were affected by negative childhood experiences, such as being from a low-income household.

The researchers analyzed MRI scans of black children in the United States to identify volume differences in certain brain structures. They found that these differences could accumulate as children grow and play a role in the development of mental health problems, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), later in life.

Lower brain volume was detected in children with lower household income, whether black or white. However, black children are more likely to live in low-income households in the United States, such as the United Kingdom, and are therefore more likely to be affected.

“Toxic stress” refers to prolonged exposure to adverse experiences that leads to excessive activation of stress response systems and buildup of stress hormones, which in turn disrupt immune and metabolic regulatory systems and ultimately account, the structure of the developing brain.

“Overall, adversity in early life can act as a toxic stressor that disproportionately impacts black children due to their significantly greater exposure to adversity and contributes to differential neural development in key regions of threat processing,” the researchers said.

On average, black American households have lower income, lower education, and higher rates of unemployment and poverty than white households.

Research suggests that black children are more likely to be exposed to trauma and domestic violence, and more likely to have a parent who is dead, in prison, divorced or separated, compared to white children.

“These racial disparities are not random,” the researchers confirmed. “Rather, they are deeply rooted structural inequalities that result from a history of disenfranchisement of minority racial groups (e.g., slavery, segregation) that are reinforced through societal norms and practices (c i.e. systemic racism).”

Some psychologists have long attempted to assert the blatant and discredited theory that black people’s brains are different because they are inferior.

However, given that race is a social construct and that all humans are 99.9% identical in their genetic makeup, the study was hailed as further evidence that social inequality is a key determinant of inequality in health, not the other way around.

Nathaniel G. Harnett, who led the study and is director of the Neurobiology of Affective Traumatic Experiences Laboratory at McLean Hospital, said: “There is this (…) opinion that blacks and whites have different brains. different.

“When you do brain scans, you sometimes see differences in how the brain responds to different stimuli, or there may be differences in the size of different regions of the brain.”

“But we don’t think it’s due to skin color. We don’t think white people have categorically different brains than black people. We really think it’s due to the different experiences these groups have,” he added.

The Independent