Socioeconomic influences on brain function: implications for health

Abstract

Socioeconomic-based disparities in physical health outcomes are well established, with individuals from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds being more likely to experience chronic disease morbidity and early mortality compared to those from higher SES strata. While numerous studies in recent decades have focused on understanding the contextual, psychosocial, and biological mechanisms linking SES and health, the neural pathways that contribute to this relationship are currently underinvestigated. The present paper reviews and synthesizes the small number of published studies that have explored links between SES and health-relevant neural functioning. Specifically, current knowledge of the relationship between socioeconomic factors and neural systems that may be affected by low SES contexts, including those related to processing threat and stress, responding to reward, and engaging in emotion regulation, is reviewed. Gaps in our knowledge that could be filled by health neuroscience research are emphasized, in an effort to catalyze future studies in this area. Understanding the neural mechanisms linking SES and health is crucial for building comprehensive models of the pathways by which social inequalities become health inequalities and may help identify novel targets for intervention to prevent health disparities. Health neuroscience research has a critical role to play in this important area of research.

Population variability in social brain morphology: links to socioeconomic status and health disparity

“…Despite participants having the same high health status, the observed SMG volume effects involving different SES levels may be related to one's subjective experience in the social environment (Muscatell 2018). For example, recent evidence revealed a SES-based difference in social distancing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic (Weill et al 2020).…”

“…Disproportionately worse health outcomes were reported in low-SES individuals (Patel et al 2020). SES is a multifactorial construct that tracks dimensions of lifestyle, habitus, and world view, such as economic resources, occupational prestige and education attainment (Farah, 2017;Muscatell, 2018). A variety of studies showed that the "better off" an individual is as captured by common SES measures, the lower their risk to incur detrimental mental and physical health outcomes (Nancy E. Adler & Newman, 2002;Braveman et al, 2005).…”

“…In contrast to objective SES measures such as yearly income, subjective or perceived indicators of SES reflect a person's perspective on where they stand in the social hierarchy in comparison to others (Muscatell, 2018). The psychosocial nature of subjective SES indicators may also pinpoint an individual's perceived well-being and personal experiences of deprivation better than objective SES measures (Brito & Noble, 2014;Singh-Manoux et al, 2007).…”

Smoking mediates the relationship between SES and brain volume: The CARDIA study

“…SES was operationalized as a composite score of total years of formal education and household income over the past 12 months. Because education and income are salient indicators of SES [6,7] and national data demonstrates weak-moderate correlations between these measures [24], investigators routinely use a composite index of SES [3,20,25,26]. Similar to previous research, education and income were categorized into approximately equal tertiles (education: 1 = � 12; 2 = 13-16, 3 = � 17; income: 1 = � 49,999; 2 = 50,000-99,999; 3 = � 100,000) and were summed to create a SES score which ranged from 2 (low SES) to 6 (high SES) [26].…”

“…Importantly, lifestyle factors associated with SES have shown to influence brain volume [14][15][16] and dementia risk [17][18][19]. Recent research suggests SES may be related to alterations in brain health [20][21][22], however, prior studies have not investigated modifiable lifestyle factors that may contribute to the observed associations.…”