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Cromie, W. J. (2003). //Childhood abuse hurts the brain//. (Master's thesis, Harvard University)Retrieved from http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/05.22/01-brain.html 1. Abuse during childhood can change the structure and function of a brain, and increase the risk of everything from anxiety to suicide.

2. A thick cable of nerve cells connecting the right and left sides of the brain (corpus callosum) is smaller than normal in abused children... The researchers concluded that, in boys, neglect was associated with a significant reduction in the size of the important connector. It was also abnormally small in girls who were sexually abused.

3. "We believe that a smaller corpus collosum leads to less integration of the two halves of the brain, and that this can result in dramatic shifts in mood and personality," Teicher explains.

4. Patients with a history of sexual abuse or intense verbal badgering showed less blood flow in a part of the brain known as the cerebellar vermis. The vermis aids healthy people to maintain an emotional balance, but in those with a history of childhood abuse, that stabilizing function may become impaired.

5. Teicher points out that the vermis is strongly influenced by the environment as opposed to genetic factors.

6. The connection between abuse and brain addling apparently involves stress hormones.

7. Harsh punishment, unwanted sexual advances, belittling, and neglect are thought to release a cascade of various stress hormones, which produces an enduring effect on the signals that brain cells send and receive from each other.

8. "We know that (lab) animals exposed to stress early in life develop a brain that is wired to experience fear, anxiety, and intense fight-or-flee reactions," says Teicher. "We think the same is true of people."

9. Experiments at McLean Hosptial, for example, show that patients with a history of abuse are twice as likely to show abnormal electrical activity [in the brain] as nonabused people.

10. The researchers believe that these left-side defects contribute to development of depression and memory problems in abused people.

11. He and his colleagues have already found evidence of anxiety, depression, and brain differences in a study of 554 college students exposed to loud yelling, screaming, and belittling remarks directed at them.

12. Other research has revealed that electrical abnormalities in the brains of abused people are similar to those seen in patients with epilepsy. Some of these abuse victims even experience fake or pseudoseizures, although physical evidence of epilepsy is lacking.

13. People who have been abused as children admit to thinking about suicide more often than those who were not abused.

14. "We see terribly high levels of suicide ideation in patients that show brain abnormalities that mimic epilepsy," Teicher says. "Suicidal thoughts occur four to five times more frequently in patients with these abnormalities than in healthy people."

15. "Childhood abuse can produce abnormal electrical brain activity that resembles a seizure state, but does not actually produce epilepsy."