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Wednesday, 7 October 2026dailybeirut.com
Tech & Science
New UCLA-led neuroimaging research identifies specific structural brain changes linked to the severity of childhood abuse and neglect, with pronounced effects in young women.
A new neuroimaging analysis led by psychologists at the University of California - Los Angeles has identified lasting physical alterations in the brain associated with childhood maltreatment. The study establishes a link between the severity of various adverse experiences and changes in cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical volume. These structural deviations were observed through MRI scans of individuals across a diverse, global sample, marking the largest investigation of its kind into the neurobiological legacy of early-life trauma.
Tiffany Ho, a UCLA psychology professor and the study’s corresponding author, noted that childhood maltreatment is a significant risk factor for stress-related disorders such as major depressive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. Published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, the research sought to determine if these adverse experiences leave a measurable "neurobiological scar." While prior neuroimaging studies often focused on cumulative exposure effects, this team investigated how developmental timing influences physical brain structure during periods of heightened plasticity, when neural networks are particularly sensitive to environmental inputs.
Haley Wang, now a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA Psychiatry, collaborated with the ENIGMA Consortium to analyze brain MRI images from 1,389 patients diagnosed with PTSD or MDD, alongside 2,322 healthy controls. Data was collected from eight different countries. The researchers measured specific brain dimensions, including the thickness of the cortex (the outer layer) and the volume of the subcortex (inner layers), as well as overall surface area. Participants completed standard questionnaires to retrospectively assess five types of maltreatment: physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, physical neglect, and emotional neglect.
The team created two separate scores to distinguish the effects of trauma from neglect: one for total abuse severity and another for total neglect severity. Using an index of typical brain growth—similar to a pediatric growth chart—the researchers found non-uniform structural differences in brains of individuals with high maltreatment scores. More severe abuse correlated with unusually larger thalamus and pallidum volumes, smaller isthmus cingulate cortex regions, and expanded medial orbitofrontal cortex surface areas relative to age expectations. These changes were more pronounced in young women than in men or children, with many patterns persisting into older adulthood.
Neglect showed more limited structural impacts compared to abuse. In young women, neglect was associated primarily with surface area deviations in the cingulate regions near the corpus callosum. For young men, effects were restricted to a smaller right middle temporal cortex located on the lower right side. Wang and Ho suggested that the stronger response in women might relate to higher rates of sexual trauma among girls during sensitive developmental windows, or potentially greater neurological sensitivity to trauma, though further research is needed to clarify these mechanisms.
"The changes we measured for the cortex were parceled out over 70 different regions of the brain," said Wang. "But not every region followed the same pattern. We found a widespread pattern of volume changes, surface area changes and thickness changes in many regions that are involved in emotional and cognitive functioning. We saw thinning in some areas, but also, in some potentially complementary regions, we see thickening. Some regions are expanded, while others are shrunk."
These findings contradict the idea that childhood trauma exerts a singular, static effect on the brain. Instead, distinct types of early adversity appear to drive varied structural changes dependent on age and sex. The study does not provide information regarding the specific cognitive, emotional, or developmental capabilities of individuals exhibiting these brain "scars." Funding for the research came from multiple U.S. and international agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Mental Health.
