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