Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 66, Issue 7, 1 October 2009, Pages 642-648
Biological Psychiatry

Archival Report
Childhood Sexual Abuse Is Associated with Reduced Gray Matter Volume in Visual Cortex of Young Women

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.04.021Get rights and content

Background

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been associated with alterations in brain morphology using region of interest analyses that have focused on stress-sensitive target regions. This study was designed to ascertain the effects on gray matter volume (GMV) of exposure to CSA in healthy young adult college students selected based on exposure history regardless of psychiatric outcome. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) provided unbiased delineation of the most significantly affected brain regions.

Methods

High-resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) datasets were obtained for 23 unmedicated female subjects with CSA and 14 healthy female control subjects of equivalent age and socioeconomic status with no history of trauma. Cortical surface-based analysis (FreeSurfer) was performed to verify VBM results.

Results

Gray matter volume was reduced by 12.6% and 18.1% in right and left primary visual (V1) and visual association cortices of abused subjects. This reduction was directly related to duration of CSA before age 12. Gray matter volume of left and right V1 correlated with measure of visual memory (r = .353, p = .032 and r = .448, p = .005). Cortical surface-based analysis indicated that GMV of abused subjects was reduced in the left fusiform (p = .004), left middle occipital (p = .04), and right lingual (p = .002) gyri.

Conclusions

Early visual experience exerts a strong influence on the developing mammalian visual cortex. Present findings indicate that exposure to CSA may also affect the development of this region and are apparent even in a population of subjects who are sufficiently healthy to matriculate.

Section snippets

Methods and Materials

Subjects were right-handed, healthy, unmedicated young adults (18–22 years of age) with excellent hearing and visual acuity, recruited by advertisements targeted to college students, and selected based on a complete absence of exposure to trauma or a self-reported history of forced contact CSA. This narrow age range was chosen to recruit subjects as close to the experience as possible who could provide independent informed consent and to minimize variations in brain morphometry related to

Results

There were two significant clusters of reduced GMV in CSA subjects (Figure 1). The largest involved left primary (V1) and secondary (V2) visual cortex (Brodmann area [BA] 1718; Talairach's coordinates x = −30 to −14, y = −89 to −70, z = −9 to 2) (Z = 4.03, corrected cluster level). A slightly smaller cluster was seen in the same regions on the right side (Talairach's coordinates x = 16 to 40, y = −89 to −72, z = 1 to 5) (Z = 3.87, corrected cluster level). Compared with healthy control

Discussion

Gray matter volume was significantly reduced in left and right lingual (BA 17) and inferior occipital gyri (BA 18) of young adults with CSA. This unexpected finding emerged from a global VBM analytic approach. Cortical surface-based analyses confirmed a significantly lower GMV in the left > right visual cortex. Previous studies on the effects of early abuse focused on ROIs and did not report results for occipital cortex, with one notable exception. Fennema-Notestine et al. (40) conducted a

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