Brian B. Avants1, Gwen Lawson1, James Gee1, Martha Farah1, Hallam Hurt2
1University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States; 2Children's hospital of philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, United States
The brain depends upon early nurturance and environmental input to sculpt and prune its extensive neural architecture as it develops. However, the impact of childhood experience on brain development is not well understood. we examine the relationship between age 4 mea- sures of a childs home environment and cortical thickness derived from T1-weighted MRI. This study is the first to document a neural substrate that is specifically sensitive to normal variation in overall quality of early childhood experience.