How does growing up in poverty affect brain development? Research on the neuroscience of socioeconomic disadvantage and evidence-based interventions that can close the cognitive gap.
Mediterranean Diet and Brain Health
The Mediterranean diet has accumulated more cognitive-aging research than any other dietary pattern. The evidence base now spans observational cohorts of millions of person-years, randomised controlled trials, brain-imaging substudies, and recent meta-analyses. The pattern that emerges is consistent rather than overwhelming: Mediterranean-style eating is associated with modestly better cognitive performance …
How Air Pollution Affects the Brain
We worry about air pollution’s effects on our lungs and hearts. But a growing body of research reveals an even more alarming target: the brain. From children’s developing intelligence to older adults’ cognitive decline, air quality affects cognition in ways we’re only beginning to understand. Key Takeaway: Chronic exposure to …
Does Cannabis Lower Your IQ?
Does cannabis lower your IQ? The honest answer hinges on three variables: how old you were when you started, how heavily you’ve used, and how the question is measured. The most-cited single finding — an 8-point IQ decline among persistent adolescent-onset users in the Dunedin cohort — has been substantially …
Sex Differences in Early Education and Cognition
When children from low-income backgrounds attend high-quality early childhood education programs, boys and girls show similar gains in IQ and reading by school entry. Where the picture changes is later. Long-term tracking of the Carolina Abecedarian Project — among the most rigorously studied early-childhood interventions in the world — shows …
Prenatal Phthalate Exposure and Brain Development
A 2023 longitudinal study from the Generation R cohort followed 775 mother-child pairs from pregnancy through age 14 and asked a precise question: do phthalates — the plasticizers and solvents found in consumer products from food packaging to cosmetics — pass through the placenta and leave a measurable signature on …
Air Pollution and Cognitive Function
For decades, the public conversation about air pollution focused on lungs and hearts. Over the last fifteen years, evidence has accumulated that the brain — and especially the developing brain — is also a vulnerable target. The most useful summary of the current evidence: even at fine particulate (PM2.5) concentrations …
Caregiving and Adolescent Cognitive Outcomes
The Trude et al. (2021) analysis published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health tested whether two operationally distinct components of nurturing care—responsive caregiving and learning opportunities—buffer the cognitive consequences of cumulative early adversity. Using birth cohorts in Brazil and South Africa, the study delivered an answer with an unexpected …
Maternal Vitamin D and Brain Development
Maternal vitamin D status during pregnancy has drawn attention as a possible lever for offspring brain development. Observational cohort data link higher second-trimester 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] with modestly higher child IQ — roughly one IQ point per 10 ng/mL increment in Melough et al. (2021)’s CANDLE cohort. The picture beyond …
Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals and Child Brain Development
Children’s developing brains are exquisitely vulnerable to chemical exposures during specific windows of prenatal and early-postnatal development — windows during which trace doses of environmental contaminants can produce measurable effects on cognitive and behavioral outcomes that persist into adulthood. The class of chemicals known as endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) — substances …