Work experience, education, and social status influence your brain anatomy

Your brain's structure may be shaped not just by age or genetics, but also by your socioeconomic position throughout life.

In a major new study, researchers analyzed data from hundreds of thousands of people to explore how income, education, and job status influence brain anatomy.

Their findings show that people with higher socioeconomic status tend to have fewer signs of brain aging, particularly in the brain's white matter. Pretty interesting, especially since white matter changes are linked to aging and dementia.

The researchers combined genetic information from over 900.000 people with brain scans from over 35,000 people and looked at 13 detailed brain imaging traits.

The goal was to understand whether socioeconomic status actually causes changes in brain structure or is simply correlated with it.

A focus on white matter damage
Their focus was on white matter hyperintensities—bright spots on brain scans that increase with age and are linked to cognitive decline and dementia.

White matter is made up of fibers that help different parts of the brain communicate. When it is damaged, it can interrupt these signals and impair thinking, memory, and attention. One of the clearest indicators of such damage is the appearance of white matter hyperintensities on MRI scans.

This study showed that lower socioeconomic status, measured through income, education, occupation, and neighborhood deprivation, was associated with a greater burden of these white matter lesions.

Even after adjusting for differences in intelligence, the effect remained. When cognitive ability was taken into account, these brain lesions remained. In other words, socioeconomic status itself appears to influence brain aging, independent of how smart someone is.

Using a statistical method called Mendelian randomization, which can identify likely causal effects from genetic data, the researchers confirmed that socioeconomic disadvantage plays a direct role in increasing white matter damage.

In addition to examining the brain's white matter, the study also explored how brain size, specifically total brain volume, relates to socioeconomic status.

Brain imaging across the social spectrum
The researchers used high-resolution MRI scans to measure both the volume and quality of brain tissue. They looked at grey matter, total brain volume, and various microstructural properties of white matter fibers.

Among all these features, white matter hyperintensities were most consistently associated with socioeconomic status.

These lesions, although common in older adults, are not harmless. They are connected to poor cognitive outcomes and are thought to reflect damage to small blood vessels in the brain.

The study found that even small increases in socioeconomic disadvantage were associated with significantly higher levels of these brain lesions.

Notably, this link remained after correcting for many other factors.

The results suggest that the burden of living with fewer resources, lower income, less education, or limited occupational opportunities can leave lasting marks on the brain, well into later life.

Brain volume and social position
Why is brain volume interesting at all? Yes, small brains can be just as brilliant as bigger ones. And enormous ones (like in elephants) just contain more "space", not more brain cells.

Well, people with larger brain volumes do tend to have higher education levels, higher income, and more prestigious jobs, suggesting that a larger brain may provide a foundation for better life outcomes.

Brain volume peaks in early adulthood and is linked to early cognitive development. In adulthood, the brain volume gradually decreases. That's because it shrinks a bit with the combined chemical, mechanical, and vascular traumas that come with aging - that's called brain atrophy.

The analysis in this study showed that total brain volume had a likely causal influence on socioeconomic status.

People with larger brains were more likely to attain higher social positions. The reverse was also true: individuals with higher socioeconomic status had brain features that were associated with healthier brain aging. These findings support a feedback loop between social factors and brain biology.

Despite this two-way relationship, the most striking brain differences were seen in the white matter. While total brain volume showed consistent links to socioeconomic measures, white matter hyperintensities emerged as the key feature affected by lifelong social conditions.

Education, income, and the aging brain

Among all the socioeconomic indicators studied, education showed the strongest association with brain structure.

People with higher education had fewer white matter lesions and healthier overall brain profiles. This effect was replicated in an independent dataset, confirming that the link between education and brain health is not limited to a single population.

Household income and occupational status also played a role, although to a slightly lesser extent. People with higher incomes and more prestigious jobs tended to have fewer signs of white matter damage.

On the other hand, individuals from more deprived neighborhoods had more extensive white matter lesions.

These findings suggest that brain aging is influenced not just by individual traits like intelligence or health behaviors, but by broader social and economic conditions.

So, being poor, unemployed, and undereducated does affect the structure of the brain. In that context, education may act as a protective factor, both by improving cognitive skills and by buffering the brain against the effects of stress, disease, and disadvantage.

About the paper that inspired:

First Author: Charley Xia, UK
Published: Nature, Molecular Psychiatry, May 2025
Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-025-03047-4

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