38 CHAPTER ONE
et al. 2004). In these examples neural differences are, quite literally, made
to matter.
The phenomenon also includes the institutions that help to support
research programs, the social policies that researchers speak to, and the
interventions that they seek to make. Although its etiology is widely un-
derstood to be economic and structural, the proposed interventions for
poverty’s neurobiological effects are increasingly technoscientific, targeting
the brains of specific subjects, particularly poor children of color. For ex-
ample, school districts and social services programs that serve low- income,
urban populations with high percentages of African American and Latino
students are experimenting with curricular reform and the use of computer
games aimed at improving aspects of executive function such as inhibitory
control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility (Diamond et al. 2007;
Diamond and Lee 2011). Such practices represent a departure from tradi-
tional institutional strategies to combat the effects of poverty on school
achievement.
Until now, interventions have been targeted at changing ses directly
by increasing family income, influencing the putative mediators of ses
effects, such as parenting style, and influencing academic achievement
and psychopathology through direct interventions, including educa-
tional or treatment programmes targeted at low- ses communities. The
targeting of brain development has involved familiar approaches, such
as improving children’s access to medical care or nutritional supple-
mentation. More recently, it has included programmes aimed at train-
ing particular neurocognitive systems directly, for example, by using
computerized, game- based strategies for training executive functions
or school curricula that employ specific exercises as well as overarching
strategies to promote executive functions throughout the school day.
(Hackman et al. 2010, 11)The widespread adoption of these practices — neuroscientifically based train-
ing programs and curricula reform whose explicit aim is to ameliorate the
disadvantages of poverty in the brain — may depend on targeted invest-
ments in early childhood education (see Diamond et al. 2007; Raver 2012).
However, they are also compatible with neoliberal divestments in macro-