RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Impact of Socioeconomic Status on the Neural Substrates Associated with Pleasure
Michael E Silverman*, 1, Peter Muennig2, Xun Liu3, Zohn Rosen4, Martin A Goldstein5
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2009Volume: 3
First Page: 58
Last Page: 63
Publisher ID: TONIJ-3-58
DOI: 10.2174/1874440000903010058
PMID: 19718457
PMCID: PMC2731107
Article History:
Received Date: 23/4/2009Revision Received Date: 13/5/2009
Acceptance Date: 22/5/2009
Electronic publication date: 18/8/2009
Collection year: 2009

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Low socio-economic status (SES) is associated with increased morbidity and premature mortality. Because tonic adversity relates to a diminished ability to experience pleasure, we hypothesized that subjects living in poverty would show diminished neural responsivity to positive stimuli in regions associated with positive experience and reward. Visual images were presented to twenty-two subjects in the context of a EPI-BOLD fMRI paradigm. Significant differences in neural responses between SES groups to poverty vs. neutral images were assessed, examining group, condition, and interaction effects. The data suggest that persons living in low-SES have neural experiences consistent with diminished interest in things generally enjoyed and point toward a possible explanation for the relationship between socioeconomic inequalities and mood disorders, such as depression, by SES.