Kimberly Noble on Socioeconomic Disparities, Children and Brain Development

As part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight series at Columbia University’s Zuckerman Institute, Kimberly Noble, TC Associate Professor of Neuroscience & Education, lectured on Socioeconomic Disparities, Children and Brain Development. In April 2015 Noble coauthored a study in Nature Neuroscience which found that in young people ages 3 to 20, increases in the surface area of brain regions implicated in language and executive functions were strongly correlated with higher family income. Higher income was also associated with better performance in certain cognitive skills that could be accounted for in part by greater brain surface area. In her talk at the Zuckerman Institute, Noble presented the latest results of her pilot study designed to investigate whether boosting the monthly income of new mothers also leads to increases in brain growth and development.