Originally published by the Voice of America (www.voanews.com).
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March 10, 2007

Reasearch Shows Severe Emotional Trauma Has Physical Effect on
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Children's Brains
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http://enews.voanews.com/t?ctl=16974FC:A6F02AD83191E160C51267D0174C3CCB9574F7DCC14957C0
Stanford University doctor Victor Carrion says knowing about
physiologic changes in brain might help researchers understand why
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder becomes chronic condition Psychiatrists
know post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, develops in people
exposed to chronic stress. Researchers have studied the brains of
adults with the psychological disorder and found a region of their
brains called the hippocampus to be smaller than in people without
PTSD. The hippocampus is a part of the brain associated with the
storage and retrieval of memories.







Dr. Victor CarrionDr. Victor Carrion, a psychiatrist at California's
Stanford University wondered if the same phenomenon occurred in
children, and if exposure to severe stress caused their hippocampi to
shrink.

"We're talking about interpersonal trauma," he says, "the experience
of physical abuse, sexual abuse, witnessing violence, and these
experiences tend to be severe and they tend to be chronic. But
anything really ... man-made things like shootings, for example, or
natural catastrophes like earthquakes."

Carrion and his colleagues evaluated 15 pre-adolescent children with
symptoms of PTSD, including nightmares and uncontrollable flashbacks,
extreme agitation and emotional numbness. They assessed the children's
behavior at the beginning of the study and again after 12 to 18
months. They also measured blood levels of the stress hormone cortisol
and took images of their brains.

They found that kids with more severe PTSD symptoms had more cortisol
in their blood and their hippocampi decreased in volume. "What that
means is that the higher your symptoms of PTSD, or the higher your
level of cortisol, the higher your chances of having a decrease in the
size of this structure," Carrion notes, adding that this was the first
time researchers have really seen that connection, indicating how
cortisol might be related to the hippocampus.

Carrion says he was surprised at how quickly the changes occurred,
even though the children were not experiencing trauma during the time
of the study.

"This is a trauma that they experienced in the past," he explains, "so
we're seeing the consequences of the trauma having an effect on the
individual, not only the trauma."

Carrion says knowing about the physiologic changes in the hippocampus
might help researchers understand why PTSD becomes a chronic condition
and develop better treatments to help children. His study appears in
the journal Pediatrics.


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