There's a story in New Scientist magazine about a new study that finds that children who are verbally abused may suffer lasting negative effects in their brains ability to process language.
According to the report, and I quote : "The new findings illustrate the seriousness of this type of abuse and should encourage greater action to combat it. Brain scans of people who were verbally abused as children showed that they have 10% less grey matter in the part of their brains involved in language, compared with non-abused adults."
Now like all (or nearly all) scientific reports these days part of me wants to shout, well you don't need to be a scientist to work that one out - whilst the other part is acknowledging that this is the type of research that needs public awareness.
If you think about it bullying or abuse, whether physical, verbal or mental has a long term effect one way or another. I was bullied at school because I had ginger hair and I over compensated by being good at sport among other things so it didn't get me down at the time, only later in life did I realise the lasting effects. I was lucky however because my natural inquisitiveness made me want to look in books, newspapers and expand my knowledge rather than retreating into a corner - but I've seen other children who have gone the other way. Abusers pick on easy targets and often this leads to the growing lack of confidence in the victim, a lack of social interaction and therefore less brain usage in demanding situations.
None of this is scientific research, just the result of years observing people. What the researchers at Harvard Medical School have done is used an exhaustive questionnaire to select 17 people who had suffered severe verbal abuse in childhood but not other forms of abuse.
Again, quoting from the article:
Experts define verbal abuse as frequent disparaging or critical comments that are intended to demean and diminish the victim's self-esteem, he explains. The team recruited 17 additional participants for the trial, matched for age and socioeconomic status, who had suffered no such abuse. Brain scans revealed that those who had experienced verbal abuse had a 10% reduction in the size of a brain region known as the right superior temporal gyrus, compared with those who had not been abused. This part of the brain contains a section responsible for auditory processing and is believed to help the brain understand the tone of speech.
Experts have speculated that verbal abuse might inhibit development in the superior temporal gyrus, perhaps by triggering a pathway that stops growth hormones from reaching it. The new experiment does not necessarily establish a causal link: the abnormalities could be a genetically inherited trait. But the head of the research suspects the relationship is causal. For example, previous research has shown that victims of sexual abuse by non-relatives have decreased development in the visual processing parts of the brain, compared with people who have not suffered such abuse.
The final part of the report is, as is often the case, the most important: The results are important because they contribute to a growing body of evidence that the stress caused by early abuse including neglect can disrupt the normal development of brain circuits. Verbal abuse really has a long-term effect on a child, there's a lot of incredible anger that shows up in kids that have been told they are worth nothing. Some children who have been verbally abused sometimes develop behavioural traits such as extreme aggression, or instead become overly compliant.
Again this is obvious to most people and if verbal abuse is left unchecked it will be passed from generation to generation in the classic, abused becomes abuser cycle. So, if you are one of those people who enjoys belittling people or verbally abusing somebody who isn't as smart as you think you are, think on - in the short term you may feel better for your outburst but what about the long term effects - not just on your 'victim' but on society as a whole.
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