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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Research Finds Growing Up Poor can Impact Adult Brain Function

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Monday, November 4, 2013   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - New research has found that the stress of growing up poor can have a lasting impact that foretells a greater risk of both physical and psychological problems as an adult. Dr. K. Luan Phan, professor of psychiatry at University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine, is the senior author of the study. In it, he said, children at age 9 who had lower family incomes showed less activity in areas of the prefrontal cortex, an area in the brain thought to regulate negative emotion. The result, he said, can manifest in adulthood as problems with stress, anxiety, depression, impulsive aggression and substance abuse.

"The inability to regulate negative affect also could carry over to having trouble with interpersonal relationships, inability to cope with stress while on the job, also other stress-related medical conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure," Phan said.

Children of lower income face many chronic stressors, such as substandard housing, crowding, noise, family turmoil, violence or family separation that can have an impact on brain function during emotional regulation, Phan explained.

The research suggests that there needs to be more attention given to low-income children, perhaps through screenings at school or at their pediatrician, to look for indicators of stress, he added.

"We should be targeting kids growing up in poverty and in families with low incomes. This is a particularly vulnerable population, and they are not just vulnerable at the time as a child, but also as an adult," Phan said.

The study was conducted by researchers at Illinois, Cornell University, University of Michigan and University of Denver and published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The study is available at http://news.uic.edu.




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