{"id":37013,"date":"2013-06-03T14:06:04","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T18:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=37013"},"modified":"2013-06-03T14:06:04","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T18:06:04","slug":"coming-soon-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2013\/06\/03\/coming-soon-3\/","title":{"rendered":"coming soon…"},"content":{"rendered":"
During the 1990s, we had a group that met to discuss traumatic illness at Emory where I was on the clinical faculty. There were biological researchers, a distinguished group of literature professors from the college, colleagues from the analytic institute, behavioral therapists [EMDR], the staff from the rape crisis unit, a guru from the false memory<\/em> set, etc. It was an enthusiastic lot that met periodically for a while, though it never coalesced – too eclectic to produce the desired collaboration was my guess. I haven’t thought about the group for a long time, but it came to mind when I saw this report. At the time, Dr. Charlie Nemeroff  was chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Emory, but he wasn’t a member of our group. In fact, it was only in recent years that I even learned that he had an interest in trauma:<\/div>\n
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Changes in Brain Structure Found After Childhood Abuse<\/a>
Miller School of Medicine: University of Miami<\/font><\/strong>
June 1, 2013<\/div>\n
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Different forms of childhood abuse increase the risk for mental illness as well as sexual dysfunction in adulthood, but little has been known about how that happens. An international team of researchers, including the Miller School’s Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D., Leonard M. Miller Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has discovered a neural basis for this association. The study, published in the June 1 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry<\/em>, shows that sexually abused and emotionally mistreated children exhibit specific and differential changes in the architecture of their brain that reflect the nature of the mistreatment…<\/p>\n

The results showed a correlation between specific forms of maltreatment and thinning of the cortex in precisely the regions of the brain that are involved in the perception or processing of the type of abuse. Specifically, the somatosensory cortex in the area in which the female genitals are represented was significantly thinner in women who were victims of sexual abuse in their childhood. Similarly, victims of emotional mistreatment were found to have a reduction of the thickness of the cerebral cortex in specific areas associated with self-awareness, self-evaluation and emotional regulation. \t<\/p>\n

“This is one of the first studies documenting long-term alterations in specific brain areas as a consequence of child abuse and neglect,” said Nemeroff, who is also Director of the Center on Aging. “The finding that specific types of early life trauma have discrete, long lasting effects on the brain that underlie symptoms in adults is an important step in developing novel therapies to intervene to reduce the often lifelong psychiatric\/psychological burden of such trauma”…<\/strong><\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Traumatic Illness emerged as a major topic in psychiatry during World War I with an epidemic in the face of trench warfare. It was variously seen as a brain disorder [Shell Shock], a psychological illness [Traumatic Neurosis], or cowardice [firing squads]. After that war, it became clear that there were many instances where symptoms lasted for a lifetime, and the debate between psychological versus biological reasons for the persistence continues to the present.<\/div>\n