A new study suggests that poverty afflicts children’s brain. Researchers from University of California, Berkeley, have shown that the brains of poor children work differently from the brains of wealthy children, affecting language development and ‘executive function’ or the ability to plan. The Scientists reported that normal 9- and 10- year’s old children, differing only in socioeconomic status have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the brain’s part that is critical for problem solving and creativity.

Researcher measures their brain functions by the means of an electroencephalograph (EEG). EEG images sho that poor children's brain resembles that of stroke victims. Robert Knight, director of the institute and a UC Berkeley professor of psychology said: “Kids from lower socio-economic levels show brain physiology patterns similar to someone who actually had damage in the frontal lobe as an adult,”

Kishiyama says, “It's just not functioning as efficiently as it could be, or as it should be.” An education professor Susan Neuman at the University of Michigan says, though the effects of poverty are reversible, children need "incredibly intensive interventions to overcome this kind of difficulty.” The study appears online in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.