article_snippet: A study found the children from wealthy families have bigger brains than the children from wealthy families poorer counterparts.
article_snippet: Brain regions key to academic success were particularly large, the journal Nature Neuroscience reports.
article_snippet: In one of the first studies of its kind, the US researchers put more than 1,000 healthy children and teenagers through brain scanners and quizzed the US researchers parents on the US researchers background and income.
article_snippet: Analysis showed important brain areas to be bigger in children whose parents had been to university than those whose education had finished when whose parents left school.
article_snippet: Brain areas key to language and executive function were bigger in children from wealthier families.
article_snippet: children from wealthier families also did better in the mental tests.
article_snippet: Researcher Dr Elizabeth Sowell, of the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, said: ‘Our data suggest that wider access to resources likely afforded by the more affluent may lead to differences in a child’s brain structure.
article_snippet: ‘Access to higher-quality childcare, more cognitively stimulating materials in the home and opportunities for learning outside the home likely account for some of these effects.
article_snippet: Analysis showed important brain areas to be bigger in children whose parents had been to university than those whose education had finished when they left schoolwhose parents .
article_snippet: She said that growing up in a household that is free of the stress of struggling to make ends meet is also likely to foster brain development.
article_snippet: The link between income and brain structure were particularly noticeable among the most deprived children, with small differences in salary having a relatively big effect on the brain.
article_snippet: Researcher Dr Kimberley Noble, of Columbia University in New York, said that despite the clear impact of socio-economic status on the young mind, it would be wrong to think that the changes are fixed.
article_snippet: The brain is the product of both genetics and experience and experience is particularly powerful in moulding brain development in childhood.
article_snippet: This suggests that interventions to improve socioeconomic circumstance, family life and/or educational opportunity can make a vast difference.