ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Socioeconomic status moderates age-related differences in the brain's functional network organization and anatomy across the adult lifespan.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 106 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
106 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 169 citations in OpenAlex.
- Selected social and lifestyle correlates of brain health markers: the Cross-Cohort Collaboration Consortium.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Pooled it
- The older adult brain is less modular, more integrated, and less efficient at rest: A systematic review of large-scale resting-state functional brain networks in aging.Psychophysiology · 2023Pooled it
- Neural correlates of socioeconomic status in early childhood: a systematic review of the literature.Child neuropsychology : a journal on normal and abnormal development in childhood and adolescence · 2021Pooled it
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- Systematic fMRI signal differences across cohorts alter lifespan trajectories of functional brain networks.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
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- Interpreting fMRI Studies in Populations with Cerebrovascular Risk: The Use of a Subject-Specific Hemodynamic Response Function.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Household Environments and Cognitive Decline Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults in China: Exploring Gender, Age, and Residential Variations.International journal of aging & human development · 2025Article
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- Assessing neurocognitive maturation in early adolescence based on baby and adult functional brain landscapes.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Article
- The Dallas Lifespan Brain Study: A Comprehensive Adult Lifespan Data Set of Brain and Cognitive Aging.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Cognitive Electrophysiology in Socioeconomic Context in Adulthood.Scientific data · 2025Article
46 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
An individual's environmental surroundings interact with the development and maturation of their brain. An important aspect of an individual's environment is his or her socioeconomic status (SES), which estimates access to material resources and social prestige. Previous characterizations of the relation between SES and the brain have primarily focused on earlier or later epochs of the lifespan (i.e., childhood, older age). We broaden this work to examine the relationship between SES and the brain across a wide range of human adulthood (20-89 years), including individuals from the less studied middle-age range. SES, defined by education attainment and occupational socioeconomic characteristics, moderates previously reported age-related differences in the brain's functional network organization and whole-brain cortical structure. Across middle age (35-64 years), lower SES is associated with reduced resting-state system segregation (a measure of effective functional network organization). A similar but less robust relationship exists between SES and age with respect to brain anatomy: Lower SES is associated with reduced cortical gray matter thickness in middle age. Conversely, younger and older adulthood do not exhibit consistent SES-related difference in the brain measures. The SES-brain relationships persist after controlling for measures of physical and mental health, cognitive ability, and participant demographics. Critically, an individual's childhood SES cannot account for the relationship between their current SES and functional network organization. These findings provide evidence that SES relates to the brain's functional network organization and anatomy across adult middle age, and that higher SES may be a protective factor against age-related brain decline.
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