Child abuse, as well as physically and emotionally affecting a child, can actually change the structure and function of the brain, and these changes are not limited to physical and sexual abuse, but also occur with verbal abuse, according to Martin Teicher, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (Crombie, 2003). The corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve cells connecting the two hemispheres of the brain, is smaller than normal in abused children, leading to less integration of the two halves of the brain, which can result in dramatic mood and personality shifts, says Teicher. This narrowing of the corpus callosum was associated with neglect in boys and sexual abuse in girls.
There was also decreased activity in the parts of the brain associated with emotion and attention (Crombie, 2003). Patients with a history of sexual abuse or intense verbal abuse had less blood flow in the part of the cerebellar vermis, which helps maintain emotional balance, and the decreased blood flow impairs the function of this part of the brain. The vermis is influenced strongly by the environment, and is stimulated by movement.
The effects of child abuse on the brain involves stress hormones, producing a cascade of chemicals which have effects on signals that brain cells send and receive from each other, with the result that the brain becomes molded to over respond to stress (Crombie, 2030). Teicher speculates that it is hard to believe that the brain was not designed to cope with a stressful environment, but rather that exposure to early stress ôgenerates molecular and neurobiological effects that alter neural development in an adaptive way that prepares the adult brain to survive and reproduce in a dangerous worldö (Teicher, 2002).
The capacities needed for such survival include the flight-or-flight response, aggressive response to challenge without hesitation, heightened alert to danger, and strong stress responses to re...