Children who live apart from their parents for long periods as they grow up are likely to have a lower IQ than those who live with mum and dad, a study suggests.

According to a recent Chinese study, young children who spend more that six month away from either their mother or father were found to have a brain that matures at a slower rate compared to children who live with both parents.

The study was conducted at Sichuan University, on children aged seven to 13, to examine how lack of parental care effects a child’s development. The background, according to one of the lead authors of the study, is how in China, millions of workers leave their children with relatives in pursuit of better jobs.

Yuan Xiao, a PhD candidate at Sichuan University, explains: ‘We wanted to study the brain structure in these left-behind children.”

According to Xiao, previous similar studies support the hypothesis that parental care can directly affect brain development in offspring. “However, most prior work is with rather severe social deprivation, such as orphans, while we wanted to look at children who were left behind with relatives when the parents left to seek employment far from home.”

For the study, MRI exams from 38 left-behind girls and boys, aged seven to 13, were compared to MRI exams from a control group of 30 girls and boys living with their parents. The researchers then compared the grey matter volume between the two groups and measured the IQ of each child.

What they found was that the left-behind children had more grey matter in multiple brain regions compared to children living with their parents. Grey matter is a major component of the central nervous system, and having more of it reflect insufficient pruning and maturity of the brain, according to the researchers.

Xiao explains: “The negative correlation between the grey matter volume and IQ scores suggests that growing up without parental care may delay brain development.”

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