Infants born to mothers living in poverty have smaller volumes of gray and white matter across the entire brain. Additionally, babies born to mothers who live in high crime areas showed differences in brain activity to those whose mothers lived in safer areas. Those born to mothers who experienced crime had weaker neural connections between brain areas that control and process emotions. Maternal stress, researchers say, could be a main factor in the differences in neuroanatomy and brain connectivity.
Scanning the brains of newborns, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have found that maternal exposure to poverty and crime can influence the structure and function of young brains even before babies make their entrances into the world.