Sociogenic Brain Damage*

Abstract

Sociogenic brain damage is a condition produced by impoverished social environments. This has been demonstrated conclusively in rats. It is very probable that similar damage from similar causes is produced in the brains of infants, children, and even adolescents. The damage is probably akin to that which is produced by physical malnutrition. There is reason to believe that poverty and the ghetto, often associated with both physical and social malnutrition, constitute a combination of conditions capable of producing severe failures in neural development with its attendant failures in learning ability. The focus on sociogenic brain damage as alone capable of producing such learning deficits is related in this paper to the question of what so‐called IQ tests really measure.