Tuesday, December 13, 2011

how abuse changes a child's brain

Wired | The brains of children raised in violent families resemble the brains of soldiers exposed to combat, psychologists say.

They’re primed to perceive threat and anticipate pain, adaptations that may be helpful in abusive environments but produce long-term problems with stress and anxiety.

“For them to detect early cues that might signal danger is adaptive. It allows them to react, to try and avoid the danger,” said psychologist Eamon McCrory of University College London. However, “a very similar neural signature characterizes quite a few anxiety disorders.”

In a study published Dec. 5 in Current Biology, McCrory’s team used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to measure blood flows in the brains of 43 children exposed to violence at home as they looked at pictures of sad or angry faces.

Previous studies have shown that abuse affects kids’ brains; as they grow up, abused children become adults with high levels of aggression, anxiety, depression and other behavioral problems. But according to McCrory, the new study is the first to use fMRI to study the form of those changes. Fist tap Dale.

11 comments:

Uglyblackjohn said...

Dude... I was 'Cinderello' as a kid.
I once had a girlfriend tell me that I was suffering from PTSD - maybe she was right.

nanakwame said...

Great danger of the incubation periods, why we move up to the age of adulthood, split adult passage into: Young adult, mature adult, and many get stuck as teenagers. Kooky age 10 to 16 especially for boys. But a simple word can penetrate for ever in a youth's brain.  "Looking for Love in all the wrong places"

mastaofdisasta said...

Well, all of this might be true....but......


....Judge William Adams did nothing wrong by taking his anger out on his daughter at every opportunity!

It was her fault she became a conniving, deceptive, vindictive oxygen thief!

Please put 2 and 2 together!  I can't believe you could post this and not relate it to your post about the child-beating judge!

mastaofdisasta said...

So, how would you relate this to the case of Judge William Adams?

CNu said...

I don't consider the judge's violent eruption abusive.

Is he a failure as a parent, obviously, but only because the example set by he and his former wife yielded a reprobate as loathsome as Hillary. 

mastaofdisasta said...

So violent eruptions against one's own children are not abuse.  Got it.  Why didn't you say that before?

However, apparently the article that you cited here disagrees with you.  And so does just about everyone else in the world.

CNu said...

And so does just about everyone else in the world.

rotflmbao...., if it makes you feel better to belong to "just about everybody else" - then rest assured that it tickles me pink.

{but objectively speaking, "just about everybody else" is a really narrow little swath of european and american child-rearing revisionists who've lost control of their children, their culture, their education systems, their financial systems, their systems of governance, and soon, coming to a vicinity near you - their way of life}

mastaofdisasta said...

That's where you're wrong.  The vast majority of people believe that parents should keep their cool when they discipline their children, and not let anger get the best of them.  That includes when administering corporal punishment.

And what you said about "lost control" is also not true.  In the very article you cite above:  children who are subjected to violence by and large grow up to be violent adults.  Go to any prison, and I challenge you to find one inmate who was not beaten as a child.  The most crime-ridden neighborhoods in the country have the highest rates of domestic violence.  In the education system: the states that banned corporal punishment have better schools, test scores, and on-time graduation rates.

Now let's be clear: corporal punishment is not in-and-of itself abusive, in that case I think those European countries go too far.  It's the violent outburst part that makes it abusive.  Get the difference?

Finally: hitting a teenage girl on the butt?  Too kinky.  It's inherently erotic and therefore inappropriate.

CNu said...

Finally: hitting a teenage girl on the butt?  Too kinky.  It's
inherently erotic and therefore inappropriate.




Project and self-disclose much?

Judge Adams should've emancipated Hillary and left her to her own rotten devices as soon as legally possible. While richly deserved, that would've been an abusive withdrawal of affection, support, and protection from irresponsibility and stupidity that she deserved. The inevitable conclusion of their mutual and reciprocal dysfunction has come to pass, only seven years after the fact.

Now let's be clear: corporal punishment is not in-and-of itself abusive,
in that case I think those European countries go too far.  It's the
violent outburst part that makes it abusive.  Get the difference?


I get that you have a strongly held opinion and an overwhelming compulsion to proselytize. I don't consider this abusive either - simply too little and too late http://sandrarose.com/2011/12/teen-who-was-whipped-by-his-uncle-for-being-a-gangbanger-on-facebook-shot-dead/

mastaofdisasta said...

Right, because minors who make mistakes deserve to be let out on the street...right...

So...you don't get the difference.  You can call abuse something else all you want, but it's still abuse.  I've had enough of your contempt for abuse victims, your pro-child abuse attitude and your bizarre justifications for it and the conclusions you draw.  I've made my point and I don't think there's any other way I can say it.  So I'm done here.

Your pro-child abuse stance, however, will not make you any friends in the occupy movement, or in many other places, for that matter.

nanakwame said...

Wow pro-child abuse, in front of any elders you would have to prove that by the well-being of the child/children which includes their disposition and alertness. 
Child abuse came from institution that taught hate and a child is a possession not from love, caring, and not from parents who had no ability to discern the gift of their child. There is cold and arbiter  on the left about determining outcomes, to the point they want to say Afro-Americans can not take of their own children. 
Reforms are needed and we start with nurturing traditions, the rising of child start with mother and family, not some cold concepts of the day. And remember this The Family was used by fascist on both sides. 

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