Posted by SLS on November 28, 2011, at 9:14:20
Limbic scars: Long-term consequences of childhood maltreatment revealed by functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging
Biological Psychiatry, 11/28/2011 Clinical ArticleDannlowski Udo et al. Childhood maltreatment is associated with remarkable functional and structural changes even decades later in adulthood. These changes strongly resemble findings described in depression and PTSD. The present results might suggest that limbic hyperresponsiveness and reduced hippocampal volumes could be mediators between the experiences of adversities during childhood and the development of emotional disorders.
Methods148 healthy subjects
Enrolled via public notices and newspaper announcements and were carefully screened for psychiatric disorders
Amygdala responsiveness was measured by means of functional MRI and an emotional facematching paradigm particularly designed to activate the amygdala in response to threatrelated faces
Voxelbased morphometry was used to study morphological alterations
Childhood maltreatment assessed by 25item Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ)Results
Strong association of CTQ scores with amygdala responsiveness to threatrelated facial expressions
Morphometric analysis yielded reduced gray matter volumes in the hippocampus, insula, orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate gyrus, and caudate in subjects with high CTQ scores
Associations were not influenced by trait anxiety, depression level, age, intelligence, education, or more recent stressful life eventsSome see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
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