WHEN WORDS HURT THE BRAIN  [ back to What's New ]
In elementary school we were often told by parents and teachers that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Like so many other bits of "folk wisdom," this one turns out to be wrong. On 12/15/00 Dr. Martin Teicher, Director of the Biopsychiatry Dept. at McLean Hospital in Boston, released a paper finding that children who suffered harsh verbal abuse showed the same brain abnormalities as those who had been sexually abused or brutally beaten. On MRI scans, the traumatized children (including recipients of verbal abuse only) showed stunted development of their corpus callosum compared to normal kids. The corpus callosum in the "fiber bridge" linking the left (logical) and right (emotional) hemispheres of the brain, and enabling them to work in sync. The traumatized kids tended to "live" primarily in the left hemisphere (acting unemotional most of the time), but will become completely unglued when faced with reminders of their trauma by moving completely into the right hemisphere with no logic to guide them. Dr. Teicher recommends therapies which get the youngsters to use both hemispheres in a seamless whole, like playing music.