Abstract
Previous research conducted in high-resource countries suggest correlations between SES factors, such as maternal education, and the structure of white matter and therefore brain connectivity (Ozernov-Palchik et al. 2018; Gullick et al. 2016). However, whether this relationship also holds in other low-resource settings remains unclear. This paper examines if the relationship between maternal education and anatomical connectivity on the brain of U.S. children can also be observed in Bangladeshi children. A similar relationship was expected to be observed in the both groups. To test this hypothesis, diffusion MRI data from two different groups, composed of 55 U.S. and 88 Bangladeshi children, respectively, were analyzed. Based on the results of previous research that examined the relationship between parental education and brain development (Ozernov-Palchik et al. 2018; Gullick et al. 2016), tractography was performed for the following four white matter tracts: the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF), the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF), and the arcuate fasciculus (AF). A trending positive correlation was observed in the right ILF in the U.S. children and a significant negative correlation was observed in the right SLF in the Bangladeshi group of children. These results suggest potential differences in the interactive relationship between maternal education and white matter tract development in children from high-resource settings compared to children from low-resource settings, which should be further examined in future research studies. Further examining the potential cross-cultural presence of the correlation between maternal education and anatomical connectivity would help highlight the importance of women receiving higher levels of education and encourage it in developing countries such as Bangladesh.