Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City

by Andrea Elliott

In 2013, Seth Pollak, a child psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, examined the brain scans of seventy-seven infants from a range of economic backgrounds, following them for three years. He focused on the parts of the brain that are less hereditary and more influenced by the child’s environment. At first, the scans were identical. But by age four, the poor children had developed less “gray matter,” the areas of the brain responsible for impulse control, emotional behavior, problem solving, memory, and other skills critical to learning. Chronic stress also produces higher amounts of cortisol, the hormone that promotes survival. To be “soaked in cortisol,” says Pollak, changes the brain’s architecture. The child becomes overly sensitive and hyperreactive. Small slights can seem like grave insults. Once the child escalates, it takes much longer to cool down.