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I know that I am not alone on this 2010 Christmas Day in my awareness that nothing special about this cultural holiday is going to alter who I am or how I am in the world as a severe infant-child abuse and trauma survivor.  Forty three people have come to my Stop the Storm blog already this morning – and it for them that I offer this post because considering the lifelong forced physiological adaptations an abused-traumatized little body makes leaves us on EVERY day of our life to face its consequences.

For all of us who on this Christmas Day find ourselves having to think about this topic, I say that what follows is the tip of the iceberg of what truly happened to us as a consequence of the early infant-child severe abuse and trauma that we have survived — and that changed our physiological development.

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Although this article isn’t the newest one on the block (1995), I absolutely trust its foremost author, Dr. Bruce Perry, and therefore know that it is an important one for what I am thinking about today.  This entire article can be read online by clicking on the following link:

Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation, and “Use-Dependent” Development of the Brain:  How “States” Become “Traits”

Abstract

“Childhood trauma has profound impact on the emotional, Behavioral, cognitive, social, and physical functioning of children.  Developmental experiences determine the organization and functional status of the mature brain.  The impact of traumatic experiences on the development and function of the brain are discussed in context of the basic principles of neurodevelopment.  There are various adaptive mental and physical responses to trauma, including physiological hyperarousal and dissociation.  Because the developing brain organizes and internalizes new information in a use-dependent fashion, the more a child is in a state of hyperarousal or dissociation, the more likely they are to have neuropsychiatric symptoms following trauma.  The acute adaptive states, when they persist, can become maladaptive traits.”

Conclusions

“Children and infants use a variety of adaptive response patterns in the face of threat, and, in a use-dependent fashion, internalize aspects of these responses, organizing the developing brain.  There are a variety of neuropsychiatric symptoms that result when these patterns of neural activation persist.  This has implications for research, clinical assessment, intervention, and prevention.

“More important, however, is that understanding the impact of experience on the developing child by using a neurodevelopmental conceptualization offers certain directions for our culture….  Profound sociocultural and public policy implications arise from understanding the critical role of early experience in determining the functional capacity of the mature adult – and therefore our society.  Persistence of the destructive myth that “children are resilient” will prevent millions of children, and our society, from meeting their true potential.  Persistence of the pervasive maltreatment of children in the face of decreasing global and national resources will lead, inevitably, to sociocultural devolution.

“It need not be so.”

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In other words, these patterns not only BUILD the brain, they are BUILT INTO the brain (and nervous system, stress-calm response system, immune system).  This is the same process that Dr. Perry is describing is the one Dr. Martin Teicher concludes leads to “an evolutionarily altered brain.”

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Maltreatment and Its Effects on Early Brain Development

Language Development and Reactive Attachment Disorder in Children

Attachment Disorders

The post-traumatic response in children and adolescents

Aggression and Violence: The Neurobiology of Experience Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Altered brain development following global neglect in early childhood by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD and Ronnie Pollard, MD

Biological Relativity: Time and the Developing Child by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Brain Structure and Function I: Basics of Organization by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Brain Structure and Function II: Special Topics Informing Work with Maltreated Children by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Child Development And Post-traumatic Stress Disorder After Hurricane Exposure by Alan M. Delamater, PhD, and E. Brooks Applegate, PhD

Childhood Experience and the Expression of Genetic Potential: What Childhood Neglect Tells Us About Nature and Nurture by BRUCE D. PERRY, MD, PhD

Childhood Trauma, the Neurobiology of Adaptation and Use-dependent Development of the Brain: How States become Traits by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, Ronnie A. Pollard, MD, Toi L. Blakley, MD, William L. Baker, MS, Domenico Vigilante

Curiosity, Pleasure and Play: A Neurodevelopmental Perspective by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, Lea Hogan, MEd, and Sarah J. Marlin

Curiosity: The Fuel of Development by Bruce Duncan Perry, MD, PhD

Decoding Traumatic Memory Patterns at the Cellular Level by Thomas R. McClaskey, DC, CHT, BCETS

Dysregulation of the Right Brain: A Fundamental Mechanism of Traumatic Attachment and the Psychopathogenesis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Allan N. Schore

Emotion: An Evolutionary By-Product of the Neural Regulation of the Autonomic Nervous System by Stephen W. Porges

Homeostasis, Stress, Trauma and Adaptation: A Neurodevelopmental View of Childhood Trauma by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD and Ronnie Pollard, MD

Incubated in Terror: Neurodevelopmental Factors in the ‘Cycle of Violence’ by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Memories of Fear: How the Brain Stores and Retrieves Physiologic States, Feelings, Behaviors and Thoughts from Traumatic Events by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

NEUROBIOLOGICAL SEQUELAE OF CHILDHOOD TRAUMA: Post-traumatic Stress Disorders in Children by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neurodevelopmental Adaptations to Violence: How Children Survive the Intragenerational Vortex of Violence by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neurodevelopment and the Psychobiological Roots of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Texas Youth Commission Prevention Summary

NEURODEVELOPMENT AND THE PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY OF TRAUMA I: Conceptual Considerations for Clinical Work with Maltreated Children by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

NEURODEVELOPMENT AND THE PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY OF TRAUMA II: Clinical Work Along the Alarm-Fear-Terror Continuum by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neurodevelopmental aspects of childhood anxiety disorders: Neurobiological responses to threat by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

The post–traumatic response in children and adolescents by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neuroscience Tutorial The Washington University School of Medicine

Neurodevelopmental Impact of Childhood Trauma: Adaptive Responses to Childhood Trauma: Focus on Dissociation (A ChildTrauma Academy Presentation) by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Neurodevelopmental Impact of Child Maltreatment: Implications for Practice, Programs and Policy (A ChildTrauma Academy Presentation) by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

The Meaning in Words by Dr. Bruce Perry

Noradrenergic and Serotonergic Function in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Steven M. Southwick, MD, John H. Krystal, MD, J. Douglas Bremner, MD, C. A. Morgan III, MD, Andreas L. Nicolaou, PhD, Linda M. Nagy, MD, David R. Johnson, PhD, George R. Heninger, MD, and Dennis S. Charney, MD

Persisting Psychophysiological Effects of Traumatic Stress: The Memory of ‘States’ — [DOC] Download by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD, Leslie Conroy, MD, & Al Ravitz, MD

Phenomenology and Psychobiology of the Intergenerational Response to Trauma by Rachel Yehuda, PhD, Jim Schmeidler, PhD, Abbie Elkin, BA, Elizabeth Houshmand, BA, Larry Siever, MD, Karen Binder-Brynes, PhD, Milton Wainberg, MD, Dan Aferiot, MSW, Alan Lehman, MSW, Ling Song Guo, MD, Ren Kwei Yang, MD (1997)

The Effects of a Secure Attachment Relationship on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health by Allan N. Schore

Smaller Hippocampal Volume Predicts Pathologic Vulnerability to Psychological Trauma by Mark W. Gilbertson, Martha E. Shenton, Aleksandra Ciszewski, Kiyoto Kasai, Natasha B. Lasko, Scott P. Orr, and Roger K. Pitman

The Effects of Early Relational Trauma on Right Brain Development, Affect Regulation, and Infant Mental Health by Allan N. Schore

The Impact of Abuse and Neglect on the Developing Brain by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD and John Marcellus, MD

The Neurophysiology of Dissociation and Chronic Disease by Robert C. Scaer

The Neuropsychological Basis of Potential Co-occurrence of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Robert B. Sica, PhD, BCETS

The Contribution of Early Traumatic Events to Schizophrenia in Some Patients: A Traumagenic Neurodevelopmental Model by JOHN READ, BRUCE D. PERRY, ANDREW MOSKOWITZ, AND JAN CONNOLLY

Effects of Traumatic Events in Childhood by Bruce Perry

Surviving Childhood by Bruce Perry

Traumatized Children: How Childhood Trauma Influences Brain Development by Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

Violence and Childhood: How Persisting Fear Can Alter the Developing Child’s Brain Special ChildTrauma Academy Web Site version of: The Neurodevelopmental Impact of Violence in Childhood  Bruce D. Perry, MD, PhD

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