MADISON (WKOW) -- A new study completed by researchers at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine has found that living in disadvantaged neighborhoods has an effect on brain health.
"It's really a fundamental question about how social factors interrelate with our biology to produce disease," said Dr. Amy Kind, one of the lead researchers and an associate professor of geriatric medicine. "But very little had been done in the area of brain health on this issue."
The participants in the study were already enrolled in the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Disease Research Center Clinical Core and the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer's Prevention study. It's a group of nearly 1,000 people with or without memory loss who volunteer for studies designed to investigate factors related to Alzheimer's disease.
"It helps us understand how brains change over the course of a lifetime in response to different types of risk factors," said Kind. "It also helps us understand more about what types of interventions could be developed or are needed in order to improve our brain health."
In the study about brain health and disadvantaged neighborhoods, Kind said they looked at hippocampul and total brain volumes of 951 individuals.
They found that those hippocampul areas, which are the memory centers of the brain, were about 4 percent smaller for people that lived in highly disadvantaged neighborhoods.
"The smaller size was equivalent to what one would have in four to seven extra years of brain aging," said Kind.
For now, these participants aren't showing any symptoms but Kind said that, in general, people who have smaller hippocampi often start developing memory disorders.
"The hippocampus is profoundly impacted in Alzheimer's disease," she said.
While researchers know that living in a disadvantaged neighborhood affects brain health, there's still more research to be done that would pinpoint exactly what it is about these neighborhoods that impacts it.
"If I were to make a best guess as to what could be happening, we could say that some health behaviors may have a role, but also chronic toxic stress," she said. "Living in one of these environments over a long period of time likely plays a role as well."
The findings were adjusted already for education, race, age and gender, so those factors are partially accounted for.
"It raises questions about whether some of those other social determinants are playing a role," she said. "But there's so much more to be done and studied."
Kind and her team have developed a tool called the Neighborhood Atlas, which maps any neighborhood within the continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. It identifies where those highly disadvantaged neighborhoods are located, and Kind said that can be something leaders use to help improve the health of the individuals who live in those neighborhoods.
"We just hope that individuals will take note of this, will take action for their health, will think about brain health when they exercise, when they socialize and when they engage in terms of their own cognitive activities to try to better their own health but better the health for those around them too," said Kind.
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February 07, 2020 at 02:53AM
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UW study finds where you live impacts your brain - WKOW
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