Division of Developmental Higher Brain Functions, United Graduate School of Child Development, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.
Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2024 Mar 7;14(1):5671. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-53666-0.
Child abuse causes lifelong adverse outcomes for both physical and mental health, although many are resilient. Efforts to prevent this issue from the parental side require an understanding of the neurobiological basis that leads abusive parents to perpetrate abuse and the influence of the intergenerational chain of childhood abuse. Therefore, this study was conducted to compare the brain white-matter fiber structures between 11 maltreating mothers who had been recognized as having conducted child abuse prior to the intervention and 40 age-matched control mothers using tract-based spatial statistics. There was a significantly reduced axial diffusivity (AD) and a similar trend in fractional anisotropy (FA) in the right corticospinal tract in maltreating mothers compared to control mothers. Therefore, maltreating mothers may have excessive control over the forcefulness of voluntary movements. These features also decreased as the number of childhood abuse experiences increased, suggesting that an intergenerational chain of child abuse may also be involved. Other aspects observed were that the higher the current depressive symptoms, the lower the AD and FA values; however, they were not related to parental practice or empathy. These results corroborate the neurobiological features that perpetrate behaviors in abusive mothers.
儿童虐待对身心健康都会造成终身不良后果，尽管许多人具有弹性。从父母的角度来努力预防这个问题，需要了解导致虐待父母实施虐待的神经生物学基础，以及儿童虐待代际链的影响。因此，本研究比较了 11 名在干预前被确认为实施过儿童虐待的虐待母亲和 40 名年龄匹配的对照母亲的大脑白质纤维结构，使用基于束的空间统计学方法。与对照组母亲相比，虐待母亲的右侧皮质脊髓束的轴向扩散率（AD）显著降低，各向异性分数（FA）也有类似的趋势。因此，虐待母亲可能对自愿运动的力度有过度的控制。随着童年虐待经历次数的增加，这些特征也会减少，这表明代际儿童虐待链也可能涉及其中。其他观察到的方面是，当前抑郁症状越高，AD 和 FA 值越低；然而，它们与父母的做法或同理心无关。这些结果证实了虐待母亲实施行为的神经生物学特征。
