Educational Environment and White Matter Development in Early Adolescence

Abstract

Coarse measures of socioeconomic status, such as parental income or parental education, have been linked to differences in white matter development. However, these measures do not provide insight into specific aspects of an individuals environment and how they relate to brain development. On the other hand, educational intervention studies have shown that changes in an individuals educational context can drive measurable changes in their white matter. These studies, however, rarely consider socioeconomic factors in their results. In the present study, we examined the unique effect of educational opportunity on white matter development, even when controlling other known socioeconomic factors. To explore this question, we leveraged the rich demographic and neuroimaging data available in the ABCD study, as well the unique data-crosswalk between ABCD and the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA). We find that educational opportunity is related to accelerated white matter development, even when accounting for other socioeconomic factors, and that this relationship is most pronounced in white matter tracts associated with academic skills. These results suggest that the school a child attends has a measurable impact on brain development for years to come.