Neuroscience: "Child Abuse Can Cause Brain Changes"
"Child Abuse Can Cause Brain Changes" by United Press International
"Childhood abuse or emotional neglect can result in structural brain changes, say researchers at Ireland's Trinity College Dublin. Thomas Frodl at the School of Medicine and Trinity Institute for Neuroscience said the finding was based on a study of 24 patients 18-65, who were being treated for major depression.
The researchers used high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging scans of the brain and childhood stress assessments. Special analysis programs were used to measure brain regions and the results were compared with 27 healthy control subjects matched for age and gender. "These structural alterations of the brain are associated with a higher vulnerability to depression and a more chronic course of the depression might be associated with further structural changes," Frodl said. "Therefore, early intervention in the case of major depression is necessary to increase the chance of a good disease outcome." The findings are published in the journal "Neuropsychopharmacology." See article below.
"Abstract: The underlying neurobiology of major depression (MD) is likely to represent an interaction between genetic susceptibility and environmental factors such as stress. We investigated, in a multimodal high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) genetic study, whether reduced hippocampal volumes and other brain alterations are associated with the tri-allelic polymorphism of the serotonin transporter and childhood stress in patients with MD and healthy subjects. Patients with MD and healthy participants were investigated using high-resolution MRI and genotyping for serotonin transporter polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4, 5-HTTLPR). Region of interest analysis of the hippocampus, whole-brain voxel-based morphometry (VBM), and assessment of childhood stress were carried out. Patients carrying the risk S-allele developed smaller hippocampal volumes when they had a history of emotional neglect compared with patients who only had one risk factor (environmental or genetic). In patients, childhood stress also predicted further hippocampal white matter alterations independently from the genotype. Moreover, the left prefrontal cortex was smaller in patients, whereby childhood stress resulted in larger prefrontal volumes in those subjects carrying the non-risk L-allele, suggesting preventive effects. The findings indicate that subjects with both environmental and genetic risk factors are susceptible to stress-related hippocampal changes. Structural brain changes due to stress represent part of the mechanism by which the illness risk and outcome might be genetically mediated."
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"Childhood Stress, Serotonin Transporter Gene and Brain Structures in
Major Depression: Structural Brain Changes Due to Stress"
Major Depression: Structural Brain Changes Due to Stress"
Full article here: http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/npp20108a.html
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