Brain Plasticity as a Social Justice Issue

So, I found an interesting article on how some preliminary research being done by students at UC Berkeley is showing that children doing certain types of play that require strategy or quick thinking are actually able to increase their IQ from 10-20 points. Old thinking about IQ was that it was a set number that really couldn't be significantly altered. For the last decade, there has been a lot of research devoted to the discovery of the brain's plasticity. While more research is necessary--and planned!--these initial results are exciting to me. The researchers are teaming up with the Law and Neuroscience Project, an initiative funded by the MacArthur Foundation,

that was created to address the issues of criminal responsibility in light of modern understanding of the human brain. "There are all kinds of things that we're thinking about in terms of frontal lobe immaturity potentially being a mitigating factor for sentencing," says [researcher] Bunge.

Ever since my brain function journey began, I have been pondering the implications of mental illness, brain trauma, addiction cycles and their impact on brain function, and the over-arching theme that much of what creates brain function challenges has many, many ways of being mitigated, interrupted, and altered. For me, this is one of the central aspects of brain function that makes it a social justice issue.

Using EEG measurements, the researchers recorded electrical activity in the prefrontal cortex. Responses to visual stimuli were found to differ between kids from low versus high socioeconomic status (SES) in ways that suggest differences in attention, one established function of this brain region. Kishiyama observed that the reduced responses in low SES children were similar to those seen in some stroke patients, but was quick to point out, "that's where the similarity is, but that's where the similarity ends. Stroke patients will have a certain amount of recovery because the brain is plastic, but they're not going to get complete recovery. The thing with these kids is that because there is no structural brain damage, just a functional disruption, it's something that can be reversed. (emphasis mine)

The idea isn't to give criminals another way of escaping justice, it's to recognize that the first injustice is the one perpetrated on so many of our children who, by misfortune and through no fault of their own, come from low SES or abusive or addictive backgrounds and, as a result, have compromised brain funtion. Compromised brain function that is CHANGABLE.

UPDATE:
Also, this.