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Effects of Trauma on a Developing Brain

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This CT scan of 3-year-olds compares a normal brain with the brain of a child who suffered severe neglect. The neglected child's brain is significantly smaller and has abnormal development of cortex, which is the area of the brain involved in speech, language, and abstract thinking.

(Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2001)

Brain Functioning

The brain develops sequentially from bottom up. The most primitive part of the brain is responsible for basic functions, such as breathing. The brain becomes more complex as we go up. The top areas mediate complex human functioning, such as abstract thinking, speech, and language. The more threatened an individual feels the more "primitive"  or regressed becomes their method of thinking and behaving.

State Dependent Functioning: 

  • Individuals get input from their internal world (body) and their external world (five senses). 

  • The part of the brain that receives the input decides which part of the brain should be in control of the reaction.

  • A person who experiences a threat goes into a state of alert. They move away from higher-order thinking, and towards use of the lower, more primitive parts of their brain. 

  • A person who feels threatened uses the emotional and reactive part of their brain.

  • Someone who is very fearful ceases to think logically and simply reacts; behavior is then reflexive. 

(Perry, 2014)

(Perry, Pollard, Blakley, Baker, & Vigilante, 1995)

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(Perry, 2000; Perry, 2005a)

Neocortex: Controls complex functioning, such as reasoning, problem solving, and abstract symbolic representation. When in a calm state, one can access the complex part of their brain, allowing one to remember, speak, reason, and utilize creative thinking.   

Limbic: Controls memory, emotional regulation, attachment, affect regulation, and primary sensory integration.

Diencephalon: Controls motor regulation and secondary sensory processing.

Brain Stem: Controls physiological functions such as heart rate, body temperature, and blood pressure.  It also stores anxiety or arousal states associated with past trauma.

(Perry, 2000; Perry, 2014)

Childhood Trauma Expert

Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.

  • Expertise: Child and Adolescent psychiatry, neurobiology: early childhood and neurodevelopment, traumatology

  • Principal of the Neurosequential Network

  • Founder and Senior Fellow of The ChildTrauma Academy 

  • Adjunct Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago and the School of Allied Health, College of Science, Health and Engineering, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria  Australia. 

  • Published over 500 journal articles, book chapters, and scientific proceedings

  • Conducted both basic neuroscience and clinical research

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