Child neglect can lead to harmful changes in the brain, with a negative impact on development in children, a study has found.
Severe neglect in childhood may cause structural changes in the white matter of the brain, the researchers report, although early intervention may prevent or even possibly reverse such changes.
The study led by Boston Children's Hospital analyzed the consequences of neglect on brain development in children in Romania, comparing brain differences between those who were abandoned and institutionalized, sent to institutions and then to foster families, or who were raised in biological families.
Children who were not raised in a family environment -- in other words, raised solely in institutions -- had detectable alterations in the white matter of their brains later on, while the brains of children placed with a foster family looked mostly similar to those of children raised with their biological families, the researchers reported in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Previous studies have found children raised in institutional environments, where access to language and cognitive stimulation is often limited, often show a lack of development.
However, the new study's findings suggest that even children at risk for poor development because of living circumstances at an early age can recover if given support in a caregiving environment.
Foster care programs, almost nonexistent in Romania when the long-term study was begun in 2000, were created specifically to care for some of the children involved in the study.
"As part of the [study] program, foster parents were encouraged to develop responsive, committed relationships with their child, were educated on the child's specialized cognitive and emotional needs, and were provided guidance on behavioral management strategies to support the child's optimal development," the study authors report.
All of the children were given assessments of their development at the beginning of the study in 2000 and compared with a group of age-matched children of the same age who had never been in institutional care and were raised within their biological families.
Assessments were done again on the children at the age of 30 months, 42 months, 54 months, 8 years and 12 years.
Children who remained in institutional care displayed structural alterations in certain brain areas, including the corpus callosum, parts of the limbic circuitry and sensory processing areas, alterations not seen in children who had never spent time in such care, the researchers said.
"Our findings have important implications for public health related to early prevention and intervention for children reared in conditions of severe neglect or adverse contexts more generally," the researchers said about their findings.
