There’s no denying that childhood sexual and emotional abuse leave their scars on your wellbeing, but a new study has shown that it leaves a distinct pattern on your brain, which feeds into other areas of emotional health. The research, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, finds that emotional abuse affects the regions of your brain involved in self-awareness, while sexual abuse affecting areas involved in genital sensation.
The study, which connects specific types of abuse to symptoms experienced by many survivors later in life, is based on brain imaging from 51 women in Atlanta, aged 18 to 45 who took part in a larger project on the impact that early trauma has on your wellness. Of these participants, 23 experienced either no maltreatment or next to nothing, while the other 28 had been seriously maltreated as children, suffering from various combinations of neglect and emotional, physical and sexual abuse. The women were given a standard questionnaire on childhood trauma to assess their early-childhood experiences, and then the researchers scanned their brains to measure the thickness of various regions of the cortex.
There’s a correlation between healthy brain development and thicker cortical regions. Much in the same way that using your muscles enables them to grow and develop, “exercising” regions in the brain means that they will tend to be bigger. However, abuse can get in the way of these regions being used, as your brain can alter patterns of signalling from the pathways involved in order cope with the overwhelming experiences of distress. This reduced input eventually means that those regions will be underdeveloped.
Jens Pruessner, associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal, explains, ‘If abuse was of a sexual type, we saw changes in the somatosensory cortex, the area that processes input from the body to create sensations and perceptions.’ In this area, a map of your body is created on your brain, each region of which processes sensation from specific body parts. According to Pruessner, compared to women who had not been sexually abused, ‘women who were sexually abused had thinning in the area where the genitalia were located.’
This seems to tie in with anecdotal evidence that many sexual-abuse survivors give, albeit varying depending on the severity and the amount of abuse. Still, sexual-abuse survivors generally report sexual problems in adulthood, such as reductions in desire and sensation and even chronic genital pain. Pruessner notes, ‘There are some studies suggesting that thinning of the cortex [in these regions] would be associated with a lowered pain threshold, so you would more easily perceive pain instead of touch from that area.’
Emotional abuse left a different type of scar. ‘We [saw thinning] in areas that have to do with self-awareness and emotional regulation, areas in the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe, which typically show activation when people are asked to think about themselves or reflect on their emotions,’ says Pruessner. Depending on who you are and the particular circumstances of the abuse, such experiences can leave you prone to depression, moodiness and extreme or dulled emotional responsiveness. ‘As adults,’ Pruessner adds. ‘[Victims have difficulty] reflecting on themselves and finding the right way to deal with emotions.’
In an editorial accompanying the study, Dr. Maria Oquendo, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University, and her colleagues wrote, ‘If replicated, these data provide compelling evidence about the enduring structural effects on the brain as a function of early life experience.’ Current research is increasingly suggesting that the brain can change dramatically when provided with the right type of support and emotional nourishment, and so this study can shed light on goes wrong during and after abuse, which will help them figure out how to make it right. ‘That is our long-term hope,’ Pruessner says.
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