MIT News has an article which in my experience is nonsense.
An MIT study finds the brains of children who grow up in less affluent households are less responsive to rewarding experiences. MIT neuroscientists have found that the brain’s sensitivity to rewarding experiences — a critical factor in motivation and attention — can be shaped by socioeconomic conditions. In a study of 12 to 14-year-olds whose socioeconomic status (SES) varied widely, the researchers found that children from lower SES backgrounds showed less sensitivity to reward than those from more affluent backgrounds.
In reality and in my experience, the old MIT was the bastion of opportunity for those from lower incomes. Those who created their own opportunity. MIT was not a Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, it was pure meritocracy. If you studied like crazy for the SATs and got 1500 or higher, if you got a New York Regents Scholarship, high grades on State Regents exams, despite having no money and less than supportive parents and environments, it was an escape, one where you never wrote an essay bemoaning your life!
Yes we had a few Prep school kids, one that I remember, but for the most part they were Bronx HS Science and Stuyvesant. They were kids from low income homes, individual achievers. This write up is in my experience utter nonsense, unless of course you dig a bit deeper as to what types of people the writers are speaking of.
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