The Brain Does Not Grow Alone - Biopsychosocial Conditions Appear in Children’s Brain Activity

When we talk about early brain development, it is still common to imagine the brain as an organ that matures primarily through an internal biological program.

Genes, neurons, synapses, myelination.

All of these matter.

But a child does not develop a brain inside an empty laboratory.

A child grows inside a home.

Inside a family.

Within particular conditions of nutrition, care, safety, language, stimulation, income, and territory.

And a 2026 publication provides an especially important opportunity to observe how some of these conditions are associated directly with electrical brain activity.

Main Reference

The starting point for this discussion is the work of Leila M. Larson, Daniel Feuerriegel, Gitanjali Lall, Mohammed Imrul Hasan, Sabine Braat, Jerry Jin, Beverley-Ann Biggs, Stefan Bode, Sant-Rayn Pasricha, Katherine A. Johnson, and Jena D. Hamadani, published in Infancy in 2026:

“Brain Activity of Young Children in Bangladesh Is Associated With Biopsychosocial Conditions at the Individual-, Family-, and Household-Level.”

The authors’ initiative deserves particular recognition.

A large proportion of research on children’s brain activity is still conducted among populations living in high-income countries. Larson and colleagues moved in a different direction: they brought EEG research to young children living in rural Bangladesh, where nutritional limitations, food insecurity, and reduced access to psychosocial stimulation may coexist.

This matters.

If neuroscience aims to understand human development, it needs to investigate human beings living under diverse social and environmental conditions.

Otherwise, what we describe as “human brain development” may actually represent development within a relatively narrow set of populations.

EEG Beyond the Traditional Laboratory

The study was conducted as a sub-study of the BRISC — Benefits and Risks of Iron Supplementation in Children project in Bangladesh.

The researchers recorded resting brain activity in large samples of young children at approximately 11 and 20 months of age. Following quality-control procedures and artifact rejection, usable EEG data were obtained from 412 children at 11 months and 374 children at 20 months.

For pediatric EEG research conducted under field conditions, this is a particularly substantial sample.

The children sat on their caregivers’ laps while viewing a simple visual stimulus designed to maintain attention during the recording, without being required to perform a specific cognitive task.

Electrical brain activity was recorded using 32 active electrodes positioned according to the international 10–20 system and a LiveAmp system from Brain Products. The researchers then examined spectral power across delta, theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands.

The study provides an excellent example of how EEG technology can move beyond highly controlled laboratory environments and contribute to research involving populations and territories historically underrepresented in neuroscience.

The Question Was Not Only “How Is the Brain Doing?”

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the study lies in the variables placed around the EEG measurement.

The researchers did not examine brain activity in isolation.

They also considered:

child growth;

hemoglobin and ferritin concentrations;

markers of inflammation;

psychosocial stimulation;

household food insecurity;

maternal depression;

and other individual, family, and household conditions.

The question therefore shifts from:

“How is this child’s brain functioning?”

to:

“Which conditions of life are associated with this brain activity?”

That appears to be a small change.

It is not.

It fundamentally changes what is being investigated.

Growth, Nutrition, Stimulation, and Food Security

Larson and colleagues found associations between several biopsychosocial characteristics and EEG activity, both concurrently and in relation to conditions measured months earlier.

Factors associated with aspects of EEG activity included linear growth, nutritional status, psychosocial stimulation, and household food security.

Broadly, several more favorable conditions were associated with greater activity at higher frequencies and lower activity at lower frequencies, although the direction and strength of associations differed according to frequency band and age.

For example, greater concurrent linear growth was associated with lower delta and theta power and higher alpha and beta power — a pattern discussed by the authors in relation to developmental changes normally observed in EEG activity as the brain matures.

Scientific caution, however, is essential.

This is predominantly an associational study.

It does not allow us to conclude that one isolated factor — such as food insecurity or household stimulation — caused a particular brain pattern.

The authors also note that several associations no longer remained significant after corrections for multiple comparisons.

This does not make the research less important.

It makes the interpretation more responsible.

The study opens an experimental space in which conditions historically investigated through behavioral assessments, questionnaires, or socioeconomic indicators can also be explored through neurophysiological measures.

A Child Does Not Receive Only Nutrients

One conceptually important lesson from this research is that a child’s environment cannot be reduced to a single variable.

Nutrition matters.

But stimulation matters too.

Food security matters.

But responsive caregiving matters as well.

Physical growth matters.

Yet the quality of everyday interactions can also participate in development.

Recent Latin American research strongly supports this broader perspective.

In Brazil, Tiago Munhoz, Iná Santos, Cauane Blumenberg, Alicia Matijasevich, Cesar Victora, and colleagues studied more than three thousand children under one year of age living in socially vulnerable families across 30 Brazilian municipalities.

Their results showed that socioeconomic, family, and individual factors were already associated with developmental outcomes during the first year of life.

This was not an EEG study.

But it reinforces the same principle:

early development does not emerge from a single dimension.

Territory Also Participates

In Mexico, Edson Serván-Mori and colleagues evaluated more than one thousand young children living in highly marginalized communities in Oaxaca.

The study documented the coexistence of nutritional problems and substantial percentages of children at risk of delay across several developmental domains, particularly language and motor development.

The authors emphasized the need for targeted strategies to reduce inequalities early in life.

Again, social association must never be transformed into biological destiny.

Poverty is not a brain diagnosis.

A child living in socioeconomic adversity does not have a “poor brain.”

That language would be scientifically simplistic and socially dangerous.

What the literature shows is different:

conditions associated with poverty can alter the experiences available for development.

Nutrition.

Stress.

Pollution.

Violence.

Safety.

Caregiver time.

Opportunities for play.

Language exposure.

Access to healthcare.

These factors can interact in different combinations throughout childhood.

A Brazilian review published in 2023 by Diogo Macedo Feijó, Jackson Frederico Pires, Regiane Maria Ribeiro Gomes, and colleagues similarly highlighted relationships among socioeconomic status, environmental conditions, neuroplasticity, and brain development.

A Latin American Neuroscience of Living Conditions

This discussion became even more explicit in 2024.

Joaquín Migeot, Carolina Panesso, Claudia Duran-Aniotz, Cristian Ávila-Rincón, David Huepe, Hernando Santamaría-García, J. Jaime Miranda, Agustín Ibáñez, Sebastián Lipina, and colleagues published the review Allostasis, health, and development in Latin America.

The authors argue that childhood adversity in Latin America should be understood within systems that include pollution, violence, inequality, nutritional deficiencies, environmental stress, and socioeconomic conditions, examining their integrated effects on cognition, the brain, and multiple physiological systems.

This perspective is particularly relevant to Latin America.

Children do not grow only inside families.

They also grow inside cities, neighborhoods, biomes, educational systems, public policies, and structures of inequality.

Neuroscience is beginning to encounter these territories.

The Home Learning Environment Must Also Be Culturally Understood

In 2025, Argentine researcher Ana Clara Ventura, together with Diana Leyva, reviewed studies of home learning environments in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The authors highlight a recurring problem: many models of early development are still derived mainly from North American and European populations.

They argue for more culturally relevant measures and for research that considers not only how frequently educational activities occur at home, but also the quality of interactions, caregiver behavior, and the bidirectional relationship between children and their environments.

This speaks directly to one of the strengths of Larson et al.

Studying children in different territories should not mean merely replicating a Western experiment in another country.

It can allow the context itself to reveal relationships that might remain invisible in another population.

The Brain Does Not Grow Alone

Perhaps this is the most important message from the work of Larson and colleagues.

A child’s brain does not develop in isolation while the environment simply watches.

Brain activity emerges within an organism that is growing and is continuously traversed by nutrition, care, stimulation, safety, health, and human relationships.

This does not mean that the environment determines the brain in a simple linear way.

Nor does it mean that there is a straightforward EEG signature of “poverty,” “a good family,” or “poor nutrition.”

The study shows something more careful — and precisely because of that, more interesting:

different biopsychosocial conditions are associated with different aspects of children’s brain activity.

And perhaps this is one of the most important paths toward a genuinely global neuroscience.

Not asking only:

“How does the brain mature?”

but also:

“Under which conditions is this brain being able to mature?”

That change in the question shifts our attention from the isolated brain to the whole child.

From the isolated child to the family.

From the isolated family to the household.

From the household to the territory.

And it prepares the question we will explore in the next article:

How much of what we call the individual depends on the conditions of the place in which that individual was able to exist?

Main Reference

Larson, L. M., Feuerriegel, D., Lall, G., Imrul Hasan, M., Braat, S., Jin, J., Biggs, B.-A., Bode, S., Pasricha, S.-R., Johnson, K. A., & Hamadani, J. D. (2026). Brain Activity of Young Children in Bangladesh Is Associated With Biopsychosocial Conditions at the Individual-, Family-, and Household-Level. Infancy, 31(4), e70108. DOI: 10.1111/infa.70108.

Complementary References

Feijó, D. M., Pires, J. F., Gomes, R. M. R., et al. (2023). The impact of child poverty on brain development: does money matter? Dementia & Neuropsychologia, 17. DOI: 10.1590/1980-5764-DN-2022-0105.

Migeot, J., Panesso, C., Duran-Aniotz, C., Ávila-Rincón, C., Ochoa, C., Huepe, D., Santamaría-García, H., Miranda, J. J., Escobar, M. J., Pina-Escudero, S., Ibáñez, A., Lipina, S., et al. (2024). Allostasis, health, and development in Latin America. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 162, 105697. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105697.

Munhoz, T. N., Santos, I. S., Blumenberg, C., Barcelos, R. S., Bortolotto, C. C., Matijasevich, A., et al. (2022). Fatores associados ao desenvolvimento infantil em crianças brasileiras: linha de base da avaliação do impacto do Programa Criança Feliz. Cadernos de Saúde Pública, 38(2), e00316920. DOI: 10.1590/0102-311X00316920.

Serván-Mori, E., Fuentes-Rivera, E., Quezada, A. D., Pineda-Antunez, C., Hernández-Chávez, M. C., García-Martínez, A., et al. (2022). Early neurological development and nutritional status in Mexican socially deprived contexts. PLOS ONE, 17(6), e0270085. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270085.

Ventura, A. C., & Leyva, D. (2025). Home learning environment in Latin America and the Caribbean: Associations with young children's cognitive and socioemotional development. Infant Behavior and Development, 80, 102126. DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2025.102126.