Experiencing racism may rewire your brain and age you prematurely

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-06-14 01:00

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A US and Canadian study of 90 black US women found the brains of those who'd been subjected to a lot of racism were wired differently than women who hadn't encountered racism as much, and these women showed signs of ageing in their DNA earlier in life. The women who'd experienced more racism had more connections between brain areas called the locus coeruleus and the precuneus. The locus coeruleus is involved in our stress response and the precuneus is thought to be involved in rumination and reliving of past events. They also showed 'epigenetic' signs of accelerated ageing in their DNA. Epigenetics tells us how active or underactive particular genes are. This may mean women who experience racism are more vulnerable to stress-related disorders and neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia, the authors say.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Network Open

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Emory University, USA

Funder: This work was primarily supported by grants MH101380 (Dr Fani), MH099211 (Dr Gillespie), HD071982 (Dr Bradley), and R01MH108826 (Dr Smith) from the NIMH; by grant AT011267 from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (Dr Fani); and by grant CA220254-02S1 from the National Cancer Institute. Dr Katrinli was supported by the Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers inWomen’s Health of the NIH under award K12HD085850.

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