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• Posted January 6, 2025

Brain Volume, Health Linked to Socioeconomic Status

Wealth could be related to brain health, a new study says.

People raised in poorer communities or nations appear to have brains more likely to shrink with age, as well as disrupted connectivity between brain regions related to memory and thinking, according to results published recently in the journal Nature Aging.

This puts them at increased risk of degenerative brain disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, researchers said.

“This research highlights the critical role of structural inequality in shaping brain health,” senior researcher Agustín Ibáñez, a professor in global brain health at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, said in a news release from the school.

“Considering dementia rates rise particularly in low- and middle-income countries, our findings emphasize the need for targeted interventions to address the root causes of brain health disparities, which appear to be specific to each region,” Ibáñez added.

For the study, researchers analyzed brain scans from more than 2,100 people living in either the United States or the Latin American nations of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico.

Results showed that the greater the inequality between rich and poor in a nation, the more likely people were to suffer from reduced brain volume and connectivity.

These associations were independent of other factors like age, sex, educational level, or cognitive ability.

“Living in a context of aggregate inequality affects brain health regardless of your specific socioeconomic level, demonstrating the far-reaching consequences of societal disparities on the brain,” researchers said in a news release.

What's more, the pattern was more pronounced and widespread in Latin America than the United States.

“Together, these findings indicate that increased structural inequality in Latin America is related to adverse brain health on aging and dementia, with larger associations in Alzheimer’s disease,” researchers concluded in their paper.

Future studies should focus on why inequality might make a person’s brain more at risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s, researchers concluded.

“These findings pave the way for future studies exploring the biological mechanisms linking aggregate inequality to aging and neurodegeneration,” lead researcher Agustina Legaz with the Latin American Brain Health institute in Chile said in a news release.

More information

The National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer’s disease.

SOURCE: Trinity College Dublin, news release, Dec. 27, 2024