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Neurogenesis & poverty

21:15 / 03.04.06

ok, this all starts with this article about neurogenesis (the creation of new brain matter during our lifetime). it's really fucking awesome, go read it and come back.

ok, you're back. i'm not exactly sure how to phrase this, but i found the article very troubling in respect to our view of those that have been brought up in stressful situations, specifically that of extreme poverty. it pretty much confirmed my [upper-middle-class] suspicions that those raised in the inner-city ghetto or impoverished rural areas are basically dumber than the rest of us, and that lack of education and opportunity is only partially to blame.

i've always been uncomfortable with these feeling, but now that there seems to be some scientific evidence towards this, i think that i need to examine these beliefs and their ramification a lot more closely. specifically, what moral burden does that place on the non-impoverished? aside from some sort of utopian overthrow of our current economic system, what can be done to address this inequality?

as i'm sure is clear, i don't really have any fully formed answers, i'm still trying to unravel this info into something useful. i'd be really curious to hear any of your opinions about this.

p.s. if you haven't seen it, Seed is a fantastic magazine, and is just getting better by the issue.

22:55 / 03.04.06

i'm not so sure the implications are necessarily as gloomy as made out. from her own url at princeton, she states that one of the central questions her work is asking is:

What possible function could late-generated cells serve?

she doesn't know yet and her offerings are explicitly speculative.

now, the answer to this may turn out to be absolutely anything. off the top i can think that yes it might be a reaction to stress in the environment, or it could turn out to be a reaction to other stimuli, or a combination of stimuli, one of which is a bland environment. stress can be other things. it could turn out to be the beneficial way the brain uses to cope with this. and it even likely to be an insignificant matter of learning capabilities in our role as humans, given the astounding learning capacity of the brain from birth - ie before this neurogenesis.

far far be it from me to be at all trying to criticise her work, which seems to be of an astounding quality. she is certainly a brilliant working scientist in line for nobels, perhaps. but the social implications are not her field and there is much to be reconciled before we put too much 'blame' on new brain science for the disorder or otherwise of our social systems.

evolution is a long long long slow process... so social policy? how do we use this work in making policy? what would we want it to do? if the goal of social policy is to alleviate poverty, environmental dangers and provide health and education to ensure the continuation and growth of the social system and its constituents, then this level of brain science, i hazard, should be relatively insignificant in that process.

do you think otherwise?

10:53 / 04.04.06

I agree; parts of the article suggested that people brought up in stresfull environments probably have less-well-developed neural structures (and also have a reduced ability to change thier structures due to the neurogenesis-impeding effect of stress).

There's an ugly sense of "well, there's nothing that can be done; dumb people are just dumb and their environments wont let them change that" in some of the writing. (to me, anyway).

Yet, paragraphs on and throughout the rest of the article, there's a positive tone suggesting that all this research, whilst explaining a current status quo, also points at a solution as well: alter the environment and you alter the chemistry and biology of the brain. And, of course, there are the suggestions that the biology and chemistry of the brain could be altered chemically (through new anti-despressants based on the ideas in this work).

12:00 / 04.04.06

Thanks a lot for pointing out this article, junior anti-chupacabra league. Though I'd heard they'd proven neurogenesis in recent years, I'd never heard the whole story. I take it all very positivly. It does suggest that now we know what the problem is we might well be able to do something about it. Which I think is the best one can hope for, except when one just gets lucky as they obviously did with prozac.

13:37 / 04.04.06

Put a primate under stressful conditions, and its brain begins to starve. It stops creating new cells.

Do 'stressful conditions' refer only to psychological stressors, or physical stressors as well? If you're starving for food and I'm dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome, are you and I going to have the same "brain starvation"?

it pretty much confirmed my [upper-middle-class] suspicions that those raised in the inner-city ghetto or impoverished rural areas are basically dumber than the rest of us
I was raised in a lower-middle-class neighbourhood, and recently started attending university. Personally, I consider the spoiled rich business kids even stupider than the people I knew on welfare back home. Do these two economic segments suffer under different 'stressful conditions' than the rest of us? Why do we assume that poverty is the most likely stressor to cause this kind of neurological reaction?

Also, what does this 'brain starving' actually mean? The one thing I see in common between the very poor and the very rich is an inability to adapt (depending on the individual, there are always exceptions) to a new environment or economic status. Is it possible that the 'brain starvation' might have less to do with actual iq and more to do with adaptability?

16:46 / 04.04.06

"Is it possible that the 'brain starvation' might have less to do with actual iq and more to do with adaptability?"

yes, it seems that adaptability is key, which really gets at my main concern with social policy: this sort of finding seems like a definite stumbling block to the idea of the disadvantaged pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, which (in one way or another) is central to most mainstream social "improvement" programs in the U.S.

i might just be in a pessamistic mood, but i suspect that this information would lead many policy-makers to more of a "fuck 'em..., they're dragging us down" attitude than one of "how can we level the playing field", at least internally. i just don't see any realistic ways to significantly level the playing field in our current politic milieu...

aside from that, i agree that the research on neurogenesis is definitely good news; it's just the question of application that's troubling me.

22:06 / 04.04.06

if every human were raised in an equal environment, there would be a range of intelligences across the population due to a number of factors.

so neurogenesis has us grow more brain cells and in an area that is associated with some learning. this is affected, it seems, to some extent by the environment.

my question is still, what is the disadvantage generated by the latter and is it outside the 'noise' of the range anyway, given the former? my point is still that there are many other good reasons to effect social policies that positively bias those who live in standards lower than whatever a community deems minimally acceptable.

an argument from a purely economic standpoint argues strongly for disproportionately expending resources in socio-economic disadvantaged areas, for one. given the realities of the architecture of governing structures in our society, this is a more powerful reason without having to go to new and speculative science.

i suspect this bit of brain science is relatively insignificant in determining social policy, though of course scintillating in its own field.

10:31 / 05.04.06

"Is it possible that the 'brain starvation' might have less to do with actual iq and more to do with adaptability?"
- to me, it seems that, more brain cells, newer brain cells and larger numbers of connections between brain cells (ie neurogenisis and learning/experience) are the biological underpinnings of "adaptability".

Having a high IQ just means you're good at doing IQ tests. ;-) (i tried to back that up with links to research, but couldn't find any quickly so take it as a joke)

an argument from a purely economic standpoint argues strongly for disproportionately expending resources in socio-economic disadvantaged areas, for one. given the realities of the architecture of governing structures in our society, this is a more powerful reason without having to go to new and speculative science.

By "more powerful argument" are you suggesting that when pitching new policy ideas to "leaders" it's better to detail the advantages from an ecconomic point of view rather than a speculative scientific point of view?

I am sure you're right here; that governing structures pay more attention to the flow of money than scientific explanations.

For me, science in general and biology in particular (it's a hard, fleshy science like engineering - it "works", you push it and it pushes back, you cut it and it bleeds etc), provides the reason why things are the way they are. Fields appear green because plants make energy from sunlight using pigments which absorb all the other colours in the light from the sun.. So here, the biological theory under discussion, neurogenesis and the factors which hinder it, underpin the day-to-day effects seen in people, classes and communities. Wouldn't it be nice if policies could be backed up by biology as much as by ecconomics (particularly given that biology, amongst other things, underpins ecconomics too).

I'll get me utopian coat... ;-)

sdv (non-human)

11:51 / 05.04.06

Politically, which of course always means scientifically, we have been thrugh this movie a number of times before..., I am thinking of the use of eugenics to mark the working classes as inferior, both psychologically and physically, the tragic case of IQ being made to fit the social pathologies of the scientists who created the tests. (along racial and class grounds).

There are a number responses that are of especial interest (to me) here; how these scientific theories are used to intervene into the groups marked as inferior through social policy and why on earth anyone would think that human differences in 'intelligence' are any more use for judgine human beings than say the "colour of some one's eyes". Because actually no, and I do mean NO social policy that justicfies intervention into social groups on the spurious basis that one social group is superior to another, fr whatever reason, can EVER be justified or accepted.

Science has an appalling track record over these kinds of things and this is why social policy is necessary to control what 'scientists' are allowed to investigate.

The issue that this raises is that science is always political and social before it is science. So that when someone produces research like this it is not 'value free' and when they address issues which might produce social policy then extreme caution and cynicism is required.

It has incidentally been pointed out many times, that the problem with all research that involves humnan beings is that humans co-operate with the researchers, to the extent that often invalidates the findings of the esearchers....

14:21 / 05.04.06

sdv makes some good points about the history of science's (ab)use with regards to these issues. I'm less sure that science can never be used to inform social policy (fluridation of water, providing milk to children, improved diet for schoolchildren), but IQ is certainly contentious.

The rest of sdv's position, however, is such that it allows one to dismiss whatever science (or "scientists") produce, on general grounds that never need to engage with evidence. Interestingly, this has become more recently a rather reactionary position (creationism, global warming, determining casuality figures in Iraq, etc). I can see how such a stance might be quite attractive.

That said, any strong conclusions from this research seem to me to be entirely unwarranted at this stage, as has been said above. It is interesting, if in the general unsurprising - stressful and deprived environments are detrimental to physical health - but the only humane response would be to diminish inequality, I think.

10:18 / 06.04.06

Fascinating article. What it tells me is that there is now a neurological basis for a phenomenon we've been aware of all along: people flourish in stimulating environments and whither under stress. The social implication is: knowing this, will we do something about it?

Leaving the science aside for a second, let us wonder for a moment why there is even more poverty and desperation in the U.S. (the only country I can speak about with any authority) today than back in the 60's when Lyndon Johnson declared "War on Poverty". Did we not have enough money? Enough vision? Enough will? Or perhaps the wealthy saw a threat of competition in schools and work places from the "riff raff" and undertook to scuttle the effort as soon as they could get back into power again.

Richard Nixon began undermining Johnson's programs from the day he started in office and, with help from the likes of our pals Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, cut the legs from under the Office of Economic Opportunity and similar programs (article). By the time Ronald Reagan left office, the "War on Poverty" had been perverted to a "War on the Poor". The situation worsens today with our current regime reducing the funding of entitlement programs "because they're not doing their job" while pouring endless funds into an endless war. But this isn't the political forum, then, is it?

I can see the potential for improving people's circumstances by helping them to become "smarter" -- if that is what the research truly implies. If we have the political will to do it, we could attack the factors that put stress on people's lives in a compassionate, creative way. If we give people room to grow, we need to have faith that they will do so and not be afraid of having a lot more capable citizens in the marketplace competing for jobs. In order for that to work, the thing that really has to change is our social model -- from one of dog-eat-dog competition to one of cooperation.

09:31 / 07.04.06

Politically, which of course always means scientifically, we have been thrugh this movie a number of times before...

Always? Not so. There are plenty of examples of politics ignoring scientific data in order to continue programs which benefit them. The current US administration's environmental policy is one such example.

I am thinking of the use of eugenics to mark the working classes as inferior, both psychologically and physically, the tragic case of IQ being made to fit the social pathologies of the scientists who created the tests. (along racial and class grounds).

As far as I am aware, intelligence studies between social classes have found very little evidence to back up any claim that the poor are congenitally less intelligent. Those that do have always been proven to be based on flawed data or, as you rightfully point out SDV, experimental bias.

I'm of the school of thought that intelligence is defined by a mix of nature and nurture. That it is a matter of numerous factors, not one over-riding one.

This article isn't exactly a call for some kind of eugenics program though. As has been already pointed out, a massive amount of work needs to be done to prove anything conclusive.

However, making the massive assumption that it is eventually confirmed that the stress of extreme poverty impedes normal neural processes in the brain then shouldn't it be seen as yet another indicator of the need to end such poverty rather than an excuse to oppress those afflicted by it? Perhaps it could be used to fine-tune educational techniques to improve neurogenesis.

Thanks for the link Junior. Very well written piece.

18:20 / 10.04.06

Let me throw my 2 cents here

First, we must keep in mind the neurogenesis research covered in that article adresses depression and stress, not poverty. It is the article that puts the enphasis on the social aspect of the wole thing. It a thing journalist do, they pick up some small comment you made en passant, most probably in response to some question made by the journalist, then they spin it to make it sound like you spent six hours talking about it. Hey do it to make the subject, more, hmmm, "sexy", and sell more newspaper. Gould probably gave the poverty subject two sentences and was quite surprised when they made it the headline. It happens all the time.

As for the issue, I don't feel the affirmation of the research support the conservative view that poor people are poor because they don't work very hard. I felt it said quite the opposite, that, no matter how hard they work, their environment will keep them down. Thus, it would be rich people responsibility to share their wealth, thus helping providing a propper stimuli-filled, stress-free environment for the poor to catch up with their lifestyle and philosophy. The way I see it, it's quite liberal, actually.

But that only proves that any scientific research can be twisted in any way by non-scientific people, mainly politicians, to serve their previously set agendas.

10:18 / 11.04.06

SDV - thanks for your replies to my message. You managed to pick me up on some points which I knew in some vague way but didn't figure into my thinking.