Abused kids 'have brains of combat soldiers'

Children who are abused or are exposed to domestic violence show the same pattern of brain activity as soldiers exposed to combat, a new study has revealed.

The study is the first to apply functional brain imaging to explore the impact of physical abuse or domestic violence on the emotional development of children, according to the researchers.

“Enhanced reactivity to a biologically salient threat cue such as anger may represent an adaptive response for these children in the short term, helping keep them out of danger,” said Eamon McCrory of University College London.

“However, it may also constitute an underlying neurobiological risk factor increasing their vulnerability to later mental health problems, and particularly anxiety.”

Maltreatment is known to be one of the most potent environmental risk factors associated with anxiety and depression but still, according to McCrory, “relatively little is known how such adversity ‘gets under the skin’ and increases a child’s later vulnerability, even into adulthood.”

The new study showed that children with documented exposure to violence in the home differ in their brain response to angry versus sad faces.

When presented with angry faces, children with a history of abuse show heightened activity in the brain’s anterior insula and amygdala, regions involved in detecting threat and anticipating pain.

McCrory said that the changes do not reflect damage to the brain. Rather, the patterns represent the brain's way of adapting to a challenging or dangerous environment. Still, those shifts may come at the cost of increased vulnerability to later stress.

Although the results may not have immediate practical implications, they are nonetheless critical given that a significant minority of children are exposed to family violence.

"This underlines the importance of taking seriously the impact for a child of living in a family characterised by violence. Even if such a child is not showing overt signs of anxiety or depression, these experiences still appear to have a measurable effect at the neural level," McCrory added.

The study has been recently published Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.