ReviewNature reviews. Neuroscience2021
Environmental influences on the pace of brain development.
Review in Nature reviews. Neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 256 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
256 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 484 citations in OpenAlex.
- Systematic Review and Transcriptomic Meta-analysis of Environmental Enrichment Reveal Core Molecular Programs of Brain Plasticity.Molecular neurobiology · 2026Pooled it
- Ferret as a model system for studying the anatomy and function of the prefrontal cortex: A systematic review.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Interpersonal early adversity demonstrates dissimilarity from early socioeconomic disadvantage in the course of human brain development: A meta-analysis.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Country-level gender inequality is associated with structural differences in the brains of women and men.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Pooled it
- Enriched neighborhood environments relate to episodic memory through prefrontal rather than medial temporal pathways during late childhood and early adolescence.Brain and environment · 2026Article
- Associations between chronic placental inflammation, fetal brain development and later autism traits.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Multisystem Environmental Factors Elucidate Shared and Distinct Associations With Brain and Behavior in Adolescents.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2026Article
- Motifs of brain cortical folding from birth to adulthood.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Same ages, different stages: Pubertal development in 9- and 10-year olds is associated with entropy of fMRI signals.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Cascading Periods of Language-Related Brain Plasticity Across Early Childhood.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Functional brain connectivity from the fetal period through infancy: A narrative review of resting-state fMRI studies.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Review
- The Transdiagnostic Association Between Childhood Trauma and Accelerated Brain Aging in Two Independent Datasets.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2026Article
- Parental speech and gesture scaffolding moderate the neural dynamics of parent-child synchrony.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Demographics change the relationships between socioeconomic status, white matter network organization, and cognition in children.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Sex-specific neurodevelopmental pathways to depressive symptoms.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Distinct spatial associations of adversity with hippocampal macro- and microstructure in early adolescence.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Stage-specific effects of early-life tobacco exposure on mental health, inflammation, and brain structure-function coupling.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Microglia-mediated synaptic pruning in neural circuit remodeling: multidimensional control in homeostasis and neuropathology.BMC medicine · 2026Review
- Unsupervised Clustering Reveals Sociodemographic Determinants of Differential Brain Development During Adolescence.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Optimal brain development is context-dependent: How socioeconomic status moderates brain-behavior relationships in cognitive and academic development.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2026Review
196 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Childhood socio-economic status (SES), a measure of the availability of material and social resources, is one of the strongest predictors of lifelong well-being. Here we review evidence that experiences associated with childhood SES affect not only the outcome but also the pace of brain development. We argue that higher childhood SES is associated with protracted structural brain development and a prolonged trajectory of functional network segregation, ultimately leading to more efficient cortical networks in adulthood. We hypothesize that greater exposure to chronic stress accelerates brain maturation, whereas greater access to novel positive experiences decelerates maturation. We discuss the impact of variation in the pace of brain development on plasticity and learning. We provide a generative theoretical framework to catalyse future basic science and translational research on environmental influences on brain development.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.