Abused Children and Battle-Hardened Marines Share Similar Instincts?

Abused children and U.S marines who had just gone to four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to have something common – both detect threats quickly and readily react to it. This phenomenon is true according to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies done by researchers from University College London in the United Kingdom.

Researchers recruited 20 children with history of maltreatment to 23 healthy ones as controls for the study. They are subjected to MRI while having them viewed with mixture of sad, neutral and angry faces to view subtle changes in brain activity in response to the faces. It shows that abused children had extra activity in the brain regions called amygdala and anterior insula, the places involved in threat detection and anticipation of possible pain.

These changes, said by researchers, are products of instinct to survive in hostile and violent environments. Take for example the U.S marines’ environment, wherein the possibility of threats comes from the native population and hidden enemy combatants, plus camouflaged roadside bombs. The Marines had to be on high and wide alert and act on their instincts to quickly defuse violence in order to prevent escalation of damage. On the part of abused kids, threat may come unpredictably from individuals within the vicinity and therefore the kid must be quick to discern the strike of threat and anticipate for the pain – a response that is somehow similar to the Marines.

These common responses may potentially reduce harm or save their lives, but it can predispose children to mental health problems when they become adults. Similar to some Marines who develop PTSD once they come home in the States, abused kids may grow having depression or anxiety because they grew with increased awareness to their surroundings. Abuse is shown to change the neuronal makeup of the brains of adolescents, evidenced by deficiency in grey matter. These changes can become biologically embedded, which makes mental health problems in the future harder to treat.

 

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