Influence of Neighborhood SES on Functional Brain Network Development

TL;DR

This study investigates how neighborhood socioeconomic status influences the development of functional brain networks during childhood and adolescence, revealing SES-related differences in neural connectivity growth patterns.

Contribution

It provides novel insights into how SES affects the developmental trajectory of brain network topology, especially in regions linked to emotion, motor, and attention functions.

Findings

Higher SES is associated with faster increases in brain network clustering.

SES-related differences are most pronounced in limbic, somatomotor, and attention regions.

Developmental changes in local connectivity are linked to SES and neural signal complexity.

Abstract

Higher socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood is associated with increased cognitive abilities, higher academic achievement, and decreased incidence of mental illness later in development. Accumulating evidence suggests that these effects may be due to changes in brain development induced by environmental factors. While prior work has mapped the associations between neighborhood SES and brain structure, little is known about the relationship between SES and intrinsic neural dynamics. Here, we capitalize upon a large community-based sample (Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, ages 8-22 years, n=1012) to examine developmental changes in functional brain network topology as estimated from resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging data. We quantitatively characterize this topology using a local measure of network segregation known as the clustering coefficient, and find that it accounts for a greater degree of SES-associated variance than meso-scale segregation captured by modularity. While whole-brain clustering increased with age, high-SES youth displayed faster increases in clustering than low-SES youth, and this effect was most pronounced for regions in the limbic, somatomotor, and ventral attention systems. The effect of SES on developmental increases in clustering was strongest for connections of intermediate physical length, consistent with faster decreases in local connectivity in these regions in low-SES youth, and tracked changes in BOLD signal complexity in the form of regional homogeneity. Our findings suggest that neighborhood SES may fundamentally alter intrinsic patterns of inter-regional interactions in the human brain in a manner that is consistent with greater segregation of information processing in late childhood and adolescence.