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Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review

Childhood maltreatment is a stressor that can lead to the development of behavior problems and affect brain structure and function. This review summarizes the current evidence for the effects of childhood maltreatment on behavior, cognition and the brain in adults and children. Neuropsychological st...

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Autores principales: Hart, Heledd, Rubia, Katya
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3307045/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22457645
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00052
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author Hart, Heledd
Rubia, Katya
author_facet Hart, Heledd
Rubia, Katya
author_sort Hart, Heledd
collection PubMed
description Childhood maltreatment is a stressor that can lead to the development of behavior problems and affect brain structure and function. This review summarizes the current evidence for the effects of childhood maltreatment on behavior, cognition and the brain in adults and children. Neuropsychological studies suggest an association between child abuse and deficits in IQ, memory, working memory, attention, response inhibition and emotion discrimination. Structural neuroimaging studies provide evidence for deficits in brain volume, gray and white matter of several regions, most prominently the dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex but also hippocampus, amygdala, and corpus callosum (CC). Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies show evidence for deficits in structural interregional connectivity between these areas, suggesting neural network abnormalities. Functional imaging studies support this evidence by reporting atypical activation in the same brain regions during response inhibition, working memory, and emotion processing. There are, however, several limitations of the abuse research literature which are discussed, most prominently the lack of control for co-morbid psychiatric disorders, which make it difficult to disentangle which of the above effects are due to maltreatment, the associated psychiatric conditions or a combination or interaction between both. Overall, the better controlled studies that show a direct correlation between childhood abuse and brain measures suggest that the most prominent deficits associated with early childhood abuse are in the function and structure of lateral and ventromedial fronto-limbic brain areas and networks that mediate behavioral and affect control. Future, large scale multimodal neuroimaging studies in medication-naïve subjects, however, are needed that control for psychiatric co-morbidities in order to elucidate the structural and functional brain sequelae that are associated with early environmental adversity, independently of secondary co-morbid conditions.
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spelling pubmed-33070452012-03-28 Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review Hart, Heledd Rubia, Katya Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience Childhood maltreatment is a stressor that can lead to the development of behavior problems and affect brain structure and function. This review summarizes the current evidence for the effects of childhood maltreatment on behavior, cognition and the brain in adults and children. Neuropsychological studies suggest an association between child abuse and deficits in IQ, memory, working memory, attention, response inhibition and emotion discrimination. Structural neuroimaging studies provide evidence for deficits in brain volume, gray and white matter of several regions, most prominently the dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex but also hippocampus, amygdala, and corpus callosum (CC). Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies show evidence for deficits in structural interregional connectivity between these areas, suggesting neural network abnormalities. Functional imaging studies support this evidence by reporting atypical activation in the same brain regions during response inhibition, working memory, and emotion processing. There are, however, several limitations of the abuse research literature which are discussed, most prominently the lack of control for co-morbid psychiatric disorders, which make it difficult to disentangle which of the above effects are due to maltreatment, the associated psychiatric conditions or a combination or interaction between both. Overall, the better controlled studies that show a direct correlation between childhood abuse and brain measures suggest that the most prominent deficits associated with early childhood abuse are in the function and structure of lateral and ventromedial fronto-limbic brain areas and networks that mediate behavioral and affect control. Future, large scale multimodal neuroimaging studies in medication-naïve subjects, however, are needed that control for psychiatric co-morbidities in order to elucidate the structural and functional brain sequelae that are associated with early environmental adversity, independently of secondary co-morbid conditions. Frontiers Media S.A. 2012-03-19 /pmc/articles/PMC3307045/ /pubmed/22457645 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00052 Text en Copyright © 2012 Hart and Rubia. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Hart, Heledd
Rubia, Katya
Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review
title Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review
title_full Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review
title_fullStr Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review
title_full_unstemmed Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review
title_short Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review
title_sort neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3307045/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22457645
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00052
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