How Child Maltreatment May Scar the Brain

Child maltreatment has a profound effect on the brain — even in kids who are resilient and don't suffer from psychiatric disorders, according to two new studies, one of which found that brain activity in children raised in violent homes resembled that seen in soldiers exposed to combat.

For that study, published in Current Biology, researchers used functional MRI to image the brains of 43 London children as they looked at pictures of angry, sad or neutral faces. Twenty of the children, aged 11 to 13, were known to have been exposed to violence at home. They were compared with a matched group of 23 children from healthy families.

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