The Effects of Early Child Abuse on Brain Development

The Effects of Early Child Abuse on Brain Development
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Article Review
* Article Citation
Hart, H., & Rubia, K. (2012). Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 6, 52. Retrieved from
Frontiers | Neuroimaging of child abuse: a critical review | Human Neuroscience (frontiersin.org)
* Main Point
Relationship between childhood Maltreatment, development of behavioral problems, brain structure, and mental function.
* Three Important Facts
* Cognitive Deficits Associated with Childhood Maltreatment
* Structural Brain Changes Associated with Childhood Maltreatment
* Functional Brain Differences Associated with Childhood Maltreatment
* Ideas addressed in both the article and textbook
* Brain development in children
* Impact of child maltreatment in child development.
* Impact of child neglect and abuse on brain structure
* Instances of Bias in the Article
* The article provides a review of different studies aimed at investigating the impact of child abuse and maltreatment on IQ level and PSTD which provide contradicting outcomes.
* Some studies used uncontrolled subjects thus making it difficult to conclude that the recorded deficits were due to childhood abuse.
Web Review
* URL and Author
Webpage Authors: By Dr. Bruce D. Perry and John Marcellus
Web URL: /teachers/articles/teaching-content/impact-abuse-and-neglect-developing-brain/.
* Reasons for website Credibility
* The authors of the webpage are known and they show in the public domain on the internet.
* The website is owned by Scholastic Corporation which is an American Multinational company that publishes and distributes educational materials, comics and books.
* Content Summary
* The Brain
* Brain Development
* Traumatic Experiences and Development
* Prevention and Policy
* Interesting Concepts
* One intriguing concept from the website is the assumption that the brain has a neuroplasticity property thus effects of child abuse can be reversed at early stages in life.
* The brain is malleable at the early stages of development thus young children are likely to be severely affected by adverse experiences.
* Relevancy of the Information
The information on the website matches the topic of the paper and coincides with the information contained in the article.
Introduction
Child abuse entails sexual abuse, physical harassment, emotional torture, and even. These forms of abuse are inflicted by the children's caregivers, guardians, and even parents. This abuse goes a long way into affecting children's mental development. Children neglect involves failure for parents or guardians or parents to provide their children with basic needs such as food, shelter medication, and security - not showing affection to children and lack of concern for their wellbeing. Physical harassment refers to intentionally inflicting pain in children in various acts that may include canning or hitting children with bare hands. Emotional harassment entails any acts of embarrassing, segregating, or even verbally abusing children (Hart & Rubia, 2012). According to Dr. Perry and Marcellus, over three million children and either abused or neglected in the United States. The experiences associated with the abuse adversely affect the development of the children. As a result, the affected children will be prone to emotional, academic, physical, behavioral, and societal defiance. People who got subjected to childhood abuse, are often associated with undesirable cognitive implications and pronounced post-trauma disorders.
Response to the Questions About the Article
1 Does child abuse cause Cognitive deficiencies? If yes name examples and give their explanations.
Yes. Distress during the early stages of child development has proved to induce detrimental effects on the child’s mental health. Such adversities in childhood have been liked causing a chain of cognitive problems such as low intelligence quotient (IQ) and academic performance. Other cognitive hindrances may include attention deficits, poor memory ad language deficits.
* Low Academic Performance and IQ
Studies have for a long time linked poor academic performance among children with child maltreatment events like neglect and adults with a history of sexual abuse during their childhood. In all the experiments that were conducted, it’s only in one account the participants were subjected to a current or lifetime psychiatric diagnosis. Experiments have constantly linked lower IQ in abused children with instances of sexual abuse, neglect, and physical harassment relative to healthy controls. Many of the studies have as well linked the magnitude of the abuse to IQ levels.
* Memory Loss
Children with a history of exposure to maltreatment have been reported by several studies to possess varying degrees of impairments in their short-term and long-term memory functioning. Adults who experience or witness traumatic events such as domestic violence, sexual abuse, neglect, and emotional abuse in their childhood are often reported to suffer from both short-term and long-term memory loss.
* Difficulty in Expressing Emotions
Studies have shown that there young, maltreated children have difficulty in discriminating and correctly expressing their emotions through facial expression. For instance, post -institutionalized and neglected children often have challenges in discriminating their emotions whereas physically abused children have significant hypersensitivity to negative emotions such as pain, fear, or anger due to their exposure to similar instances in their early childhood. Additionally, physically maltreated children showed a quicker response and identification of angry faces than did their controls.
* Diminished Attentiveness
Subsequent studies have shown that maltreated children who got subjected to physical abuse, other forms of maltreatment, sexual abuse and neglect, often have auditory and visual attention deficits.
* Lack of Inhibitory Control
Among the people who have been constantly linked with inhibitory control, disorder includes maltreated children, adolescents with early life stress, and adults with a history of childhood abuse. Studies conducted on Romanian orphans who constantly showed symptoms of inattentiveness and overactivity with a history of child maltreatment and neglect had higher levels of IQ and inhibition than standard clinical attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
1 How does Childhood Mistreatment Impact Brain Structural?
The prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) are the most affected brains as a result of childhood abuse. Some other parts of the brain such as the amygdala, cerebellum, and corpus callosum can equally be affected. This study was only restricted to theoretically hypothesized areas. However, there exist numerous scientific studies on child abuse that use region-of-interest (ROI) approaches to investigate the implication of child maltreatment on a child's front-limbic system. The majority of the few ROI studies conducted to investigate the effect of child abuse on the frontostriatal system found no impact on the ganglia.
Prefrontal Cortex
Brain functionalities such as those that constitute adult behavior in activities like inhibitory control, working memory, and motivation are controlled by the prefrontal part of the brain. Other functions of the PFC include motor control, learning and moderating social behavior, and attention control. Studies show that the PFC matures ...