Does male physical and psychological violence damage the female brain?

An international study, led by the University of Padua, demonstrated in an animal model how repeated episodes of violence cause behavioural and neuronal alterations in the female body.

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From the University of Padua, we learn that in the context of an experimental animal model, a male’s psychological and physical violence on the female body causes altered functionality in certain regions of the brain.

In particular, they cause a deterioration of the hippocampus, an area crucially involved in cognitive processes such as memory, learning new information and navigation mechanisms, as well as in the regulation of mood and emotions.

This is what emerges from a preclinical study coordinated by the University of Padua, in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and other prestigious national and international institutions as part of the European PINK (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) project, published in the journal ‘iSCIENCE’.

The study showed that, following violent and repeated attacks, the female organism shows a drastic reduction in the formation of new neuronal cells in the hippocampus, and possibly in other…