ArticleThe American journal of psychiatry2013
Decreased cortical representation of genital somatosensory field after childhood sexual abuse.
Article in The American journal of psychiatry, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 122 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
122 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 319 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- The Association Between Child Maltreatment and Loneliness Across the Lifespan: A Systematic Review and Multilevel Meta-Analysis.Child maltreatment · 2024Pooled it
- Psychological trauma as a transdiagnostic risk factor for mental disorder: an umbrella meta-analysis.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2023Pooled it
- Neurostructural traces of early life adversities: A meta-analysis exploring age- and adversity-specific effects.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Pooled it
- Childhood trauma predicts antidepressant response in adults with major depression: data from the randomized international study to predict optimized treatment for depression.Translational psychiatry · 2016Trial
- Association of sexual dysfunctions according to DSM-5 criteria with structural brain differences in women and men from the Hamburg City Health Study.Dialogues in clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- Maltreatment-Exposure Screening and Adolescent Mental Health: An Evidence-Based Medicine Perspective on Accuracy and Fairness.Journal of child & adolescent trauma · 2026Article
- The Effect of body Positive Social Media on Young Women with a History of Emotional Abuse and/or Bullying Victimization.Journal of child & adolescent trauma · 2026Article
- The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Neuropsychological Disorders and Its Intergenerational Transmission Mechanisms.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Developmental trauma in functional motor disorder: the mediating roles of affective symptoms and multimorbidity.Psychological medicine · 2026Article
- Decoding the cellular landscape of biological stress in the human brain.Neurobiology of stress · 2026Article
- Alterations of Cortical Thickness in High Suicidality Patients with Panic Disorder and Their Relationship with Symptomatology and Treatment Response.Clinical psychopharmacology and neuroscience : the official scientific journal of the Korean College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2026Article
- Decreased thickness of the individually-mapped genital cortex after childhood sexual abuse exposure in adult women.Communications biology · 2026Article
- The social ambivalence and disease model: Childhood trauma as an antecedent factor linking spousal ambivalence to inflammation.Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association · 2026Article
- Males but not females report genital sensations evoked by fixed-parameter stimulation of somatosensory cortex.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2025Article
- Childhood trauma and subclinical cin early adulthood: A genetically informative study.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2025Article
- The neurobiological effects of childhood maltreatment on brain structure, function, and attachment.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2025Review
- Merkel cell stimulation in fear and sensory signaling.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- The relationship between childhood emotional abuse and maladaptive parenting practices.Child protection and practice · 2025Article
- Review
62 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveSexual dysfunction is a common clinical symptom in women who were victims of childhood sexual abuse. The precise mechanism that mediates this association remains poorly understood. The authors evaluated the relationship between the experience of childhood abuse and neuroplastic thinning of cortical fields, depending on the nature of the abusive experience.
methodThe authors used MRI-based cortical thickness analysis in 51 medically healthy adult women to test whether different forms of childhood abuse were associated with cortical thinning in areas critical to the perception and processing of specific behavior implicated in the type of abuse.
resultsExposure to childhood sexual abuse was specifically associated with pronounced cortical thinning in the genital representation field of the primary somatosensory cortex. In contrast, emotional abuse was associated with cortical thinning in regions relevant to self-awareness and self-evaluation.
conclusionsNeural plasticity during development appears to result in cortical adaptation that may shield a child from the sensory processing of the specific abusive experience by altering cortical representation fields in a regionally highly specific manner. Such plastic reorganization may be protective for the child living under abusive conditions, but it may underlie the development of behavioral problems, such as sexual dysfunction, later in life.
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