Childhood abuse may stunt growth of part of brain involved in emotions

Many women and men who have been subjected to severe physical or sexual abuse during childhood suffer from long-term psychological and emotional disturbances. They may be invaded by nightmares and flashbacks, or conversely, may freeze into benumbed calm in situations of extreme stress. Recent studies find that survivors of child abuse may also have a smaller hippocampus relative to control subjects. If substantiated, the discovery could fill out the profile of an abuse survivor and help define what constitutes abuse.

The amygdala and the hippocampus are part of the limbic system. A study by Teicher et al. (1993) found a 38% increased rate of limbic abnormalities ('emotional brain') following physical abuse, 49% after sexual abuse.


Being sexually or emotionally abused as a child can affect the development of a part of the brain that controls memory and the regulation of emotions, a study suggests. Three key areas of the hippocampus in the brain were smaller in people who reported maltreatment in childhood.

The results add to the growing body of evidence that childhood maltreatment or abuse raises the risk of mental illnesses such as depression, personality disorders and anxiety well into adulthood.

Martin Teicher of the department of psychiatry at Harvard University scanned the brains of almost 200 people who had been questioned about any instances of abuse or stress during childhood. He found that the volumes of three important areas of the hippocampus were reduced by up to 6.5% in people exposed to several instances of maltreatment – such as physical or verbal abuse from parents – in their early years.

"The exquisite vulnerability of the hippocampus to the ravages of stress is one of the key translational neuroscience discoveries of the 20th century," wrote Teicher in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.