NDLI: Neuroimaging of child abuse: A critical review

Content Provider	Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Author	Heledd eHart Katya eRubia
Abstract	Childhood maltreatment is a severe stressor that can lead to the development of behaviour problems and affect brain structure and function. This review summarizes the current evidence for the effects of early 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, executive function and emotion discrimination. Structural neuroimaging studies provide evidence for deficits in brain volume, grey and white matter of several regions, most prominently the dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortex but also hippocampus, amygdala, and corpus callosum. Diffusion tensor imaging 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 executive function 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 behavioural 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.
e-ISSN	16625161
DOI	10.3389/fnhum.2012.00052
Journal	Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Volume Number	6
Language	English
Publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
Publisher Date	2012-01-01
Publisher Place	Switzerland
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Neurosciences. Biological Psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry Child Abuse Limbic System Prefrontal Cortex Dti Executive Functions Ptsd
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
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