Term Paper on "Autonomy and Abuse and How it Affects the Hippocampus"

Term Paper 9 pages (2602 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Autonomy, Abuse and the Hippocampus

The formation of emotion, motivation and long-term memory happens in the limbic system and performed primarily by the hippocampus. At age 6 or 7, memories consolidate and beyond this time, new memories are usually not processed. If a person was abused or neglected as a child, painful or unbearable memory is preserved for a life time. During periods of severe stress, neurochemicals rise to high levels to deflect the impact of painful experience. Damage to the hippocampus can be so great as to inhibit recall, making a healthy, normal life of open communication extremely difficult or impossible. Studies consistently showed that a damaged or severely stressed hippocampus is smaller in people severely abused as children than in those who did not suffer neglect or abuse.

Introduction

The limbic system within the brain consists of structures, which are involved in emotion, motivation and emotional association with memory (Wikipedia, 2006). It influences the formation of memory by linking and integrating emotional states with stored memories of physical sensations. It has been observed to be more active and larger in extroverts and risk-takers than in introverts and fearful, cautious people. These anatomical structures are the hippocampus for the formation of long-time memories; the mygdale for aggression and fear; the nucleus accumbens for reward, pleasure and addiction; the cingulated cyrus for cognitive and attentional processing; the hypothalamus, which regulates the autonomic nervous system; the mammilary body also for the formation of memory; the parahippocampal gyrus for spatial memory; the orbifrontal cortex for decision-making; and the rest of the cingulated gyrus region. Circumstantial evidence exists that the proper functioning of the limbic system is necessary in maintaining a healthy conscious state of mind (Wikipedia).

Psychologists and neuroscientists generally agree that the hippocampus plays an essential role in the formation of new memories about experienced events and as part of a larger medial temporal lobe memory system for facts and episodes (Wikipedia 2006). These memories last a lifetime but the role of the hippocampus ceases after a period of consolidation of the memories. Damage to it renders the formation of new memories or anterograde amnesia very difficult and impedes access to stored memories before the damage or retrograde amnesia. It is believed that older memories are transferred out of the hippocampus to other parts of the brain as a result. However, damage to the hippocampus does not affect some aspects of memory, such as learning new skills, as these involve another type of memory, e.g. procedural memory. Other evidence suggests that the hippocampus is essential in storing and processing spatial information and function as a cognitive map or a neural representation of the layout of the environment. Studies showed that human beings need a fully functional hippocampus in successfully storing and remembering the places they have been to and where they are going. It is responsible for finding short-cuts and new routes to places already familiar. Individuals with greater navigating skills, such as taxi drivers, have been shown to have more active hippocampi than other without these skills (Wikipedia).

It is hypothesized that abused non-autonomous persons have greater hippocampus deficits or less active or smaller hippocampi than do autonomous abused, autonomous non-abused and non-autonomous non-abused persons. This study will attempt to determine how autonomy and abuse affect the hippocampus, using the results of a survey and the information gathered from authoritative sources.

Wikipedia (2006) describes the limbic system in the brain as consisting of structures responsible for emotion, motivation and emotional association with memory in association with physical sensations. Among these is the hippocampus, which has been observed to be more active and larger in risk-takers and extroverts and smaller and less active in fearful and cautious persons. The role of the hippocampus ceases after the memories consolidate. Damage to it, specifically in childhood, makes the formation of new memories very difficult and prevents access to memories previous to the damage (Wikipedia). Research showed that those who suffer abuse, especially as children, often "forget" it (Al-Kurdi, 2006) when the body produces high levels of neuro-chemicals to erase the painful experience from conscious memory. Under severe stress, the hippocampus becomes inactive and disabled from placing a memory in its memory bank but is dissociated and recorded elsewhere in the brain. Experts at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, like Dr. Lenore Terr, say that survivors of repeated abuse by the people they love often repress these painful memories until they are grown up and away from home. A group called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation has been striving to nullify the cause of survivors of child abuse. The Foundation is said to have the support of the Central Intelligence Agency in a common objective of manipulating minds and blame the victims, instead (Al-Kurdi).

Neglect of the child during early brain development deprives him of the input needed to mature and abusive experiences affect brain development at experience-dependent stages (IPCE 2006). Early neglect and abuse potentially affect subsequent brain functioning and studies found that deprivation has elicited a stress response and deficits in development. Reduced hippocampal activity and post-traumatic stress disorder in studied adults suggest that the integrative function of the hippocampus, especially for emotionally charged memories of train, may be affected. Evidence showed that damage or the shrinking of the hippocampus after traumatic events is usually confined to subsequent events. A study on 22 women who were victims of prolonged and severe child sexual abuse revealed a reduction in the volume of the left hippocampus.

A study conducted on how childhood sexual abuse affects interpersonal relations (Brick 2005) showed that the experience negatively influences their capacity to maintain and form healthy interpersonal relations. Women victims tend to be vulnerable to relationship dysfunction. Physical abuse, sexual abuse and neglect increased the risk of infidelity among them. The study concluded that the inability to process and discuss the abuse would increase the negative effects of the abuse on the survivors as adults, including how to deal with additional feelings of guilt and shame, including a repeat of the cycle of the abuse, due to the feeling that he or she deserved the abuse (Brick).

The Society for the Advancement of Education (2005) reported on mounting evidence that prenatal and early experience could have long-term effects on a child's developing central nervous system and its regulation of basic physiology, psychology and immune function. Other studies revealed that stresses during pregnancy and early life could affect learning, memory and immune function, cognitive defects, impact of certain drugs on early development and adaptability to new stimuli. The Society emphasized that stresses, such as neglect and abuse during infancy, could lead to memory loss and impaired cognitive ability, which could manifest later in life. Research also demonstrated the slow start and progression of deficits in communication among brain cells in the hippocampus where learning, storage and recall of memories occur (SAE).

Post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD is a psychiatric disorder, which involves actual or threatened death, serious injury or threat to physical integrity, and happens according to a person's coping skills, psychological strength and interpersonal support (Coleman 2004). Core areas of symptoms include re-experiencing thought images and memories, avoidance and numbing and arousal towards those images and memories. That part of the brain, which regulates the processing of memories for storage and retrieval, is the hippocampus. Slow processing with high effect, such as of fear, leads to a rigid memory, which is toned down and easily released as nightmare or flashback, with the original intensity each time. This is affected by the severity of the stressful event, the duration and repetition of the event or experience over time as factors, which interact with the vulnerability of the person to produce different levels of symptoms (Coleman).

Carloff (2002) writes that antisocial behavior resulting from childhood abuse seems to derive from an over-excitation of the limbic system, specifically the hippocampus and the mygdale. The hippocampus plays an important role in determining what memory would be stored long-term, while the amygdale filters and interprets incoming sensory information according to the person's survival and emotional needs and also helps initiate appropriate responses. Studies revealed that adults who were abused as children had a 113% higher chance of developing and exhibiting symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy, which disrupts the functioning of the hippocampus and the mygdale. A review of the brain-wave abnormalities of 115 patients showed that 54% of them had a history of early trauma and only 27% of them had none. A cross study of 17 adult survivors of child abuse and 17 healthy respondents with matching circumstances showed that 12% of survivors of child abuse had smaller left hippocampi. A 1997 study on adult women who were sexually abused as children reflected the same finding of significantly reduced hippocampi. A 2001 study by the Gilead Hospital in Bielefeld, Germany also reported a 16% reduction in hippocampus size. Psychologists generally concur today that mistreatment during childhood would lead to stunted psychological development and destructive or useless psychic defense… READ MORE

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