Child Abuse Changes the Brain

Updated May 8, 2014.

A study in Brain were published in late 2000 showed that child abuse and neglect results in permanent physical changes in the development of the human brain. These changes in the structure of the brain appear significant enough to be cause mental and emotional problems in adulthood.

Martin Teicher and colleagues identified four different abnormalities in the brain that was much more common in adult survivors of abuse and neglect in adults who were not abused.

Adults abused as children showed abnormal development of the left hemisphere of the brain. The researchers reported that these problems associated with depression and memory disorders.

Abuse survivors could the functions of the left and right hemispheres, as well as those who had not been abused, integrate. The researchers suggest that this may be due to a decrease in the size of the bar - fibers that connect the left and right sides of the brain. There was a difference between men and women in their response to abuse and neglect. Neglect the most likely to reduce the size of the corpus callosum in the human factor during sexual force seemed to have no effect. Sexual violence is associated with a decrease in size in women, neglect has no effect.

Adults who were abused as children were, were more susceptible to attacks by changes in the limbic system, a part of the brain that controls emotions induced. A variety of emotions accompanied these crises, including sadness, shame, anger, intense laughter without feeling happy, calm and fear.

Teicher and his colleagues found that surviving abuse were twice as likely as non-abused have readings electroencephalogram (EEG) is not normal. The type of fault is located by the authors to be associated with aggression and self-destructive behavior. Teicher concludes that "the trauma of the violence causes a cascade of effects, including changes in hormones and neurotransmitters in the development of vulnerable brain regions are involved." Previous studies have shown that stress affects brain development in different animal species. It should not be surprising that people react in the same way.