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“Hurtful Words Damage the Brain” by Douglas Fields, “The remarkable thing about the human brain is that it develops after birth. Unlike most animals, whose brains are cast at birth, the human brain’s development and wiring are guided by our experiences during childhood and adolescence.” This suggests that what a human goes through as a child will alter a person's brain as they continue to grow. Fields observed, "Individuals to report experiencing verbal abuse had underdeveloped connections between the left and right side of their brain through the massive bundle of connecting fibers called the corpus callosum. The psychological test given to all subjects in the study showed that this same group of individuals had higher levels of anxiety, depression, anger, hostility, dissociation, and drug abuse than others." In these quotes, she implies how the corpus callosum in the brain is underdeveloped due to the negative event in a person's life and how that causes health issues.

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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me... We all know how untrue that childhood incantation is. Words do hurt. Ridicule, distain, humiliation, taunting, all cause injury, and when it is delivered in childhood from a child's peers, verbal abuse causes more than emotional trauma. It inflicts lasting physical effects on brain structure.

The remarkable thing about the human brain is that it develops after birth. Unlike most animals whose brains are cast at birth, the human brain is so underdeveloped at birth that we cannot even walk for months. Self awareness does not develop for years. Personality, cognitive abilities, and skills, take decades to develop, and these attributes develop differently in every person. This is because development and wiring of the human brain are guided by our experiences during childhood and adolescence. From a biological perspective, this increases the odds that an individual will compete and reproduce successfully in the environment the individual is born into, rather than the environment experienced by our cave-man ancestors and recorded in our genes through natural selection. Developing the human brain out of the womb cheats evolution, and this is the reason for the success of our species.

When that environment is hostile or socially unhealthy, development of the brain is affected, and often it is impaired. Early childhood sexual abuse, physical abuse, or even witnessing domestic violence, have been shown to cause abnormal physical changes in the brain of children, with lasting effects that predisposes the child to developing psychological disorders. This type of brain scarring is well established now by human brain imaging studies, but prior to the recent study by Martin Teicher and colleagues at Harvard Medical School, taunting and other verbal abuse experienced by middle school children from their peers was not thought to leave a structural imprint on the developing brain. But it does, according to their new study published on-line in advance of print in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Young adults, ages 18-25, with no history of exposure to domestic violence, sexual abuse, or parental physical abuse, were asked to rate their childhood exposure to parental and peer verbal abuse when they were children, and then they were given a brain scan.

The results revealed that those individuals who reported experiencing verbal abuse from their peers during middle school years had underdeveloped connections between the left and right sides of their brain through the massive bundle of connecting fibers called the corpus callosum. Psychological tests given to all subjects in the study showed that this same group of individuals had higher levels of anxiety, depression, anger, hostility, dissociation, and drug abuse than others in the study.

Verbal abuse from peers during the middle school years had the greatest impact, presumably because this is a sensitive period when these brain connections are developing and becoming insulated with myelin. (Myelin is formed by non-neuronal cells, brain cells that are also known as "the other brain", or glia.)

The environment that children are raised in molds not only their mind, but also their brain. This is something many long suspected, but now we have scientific instruments that show us how dramatically childhood experience alters the physical structure of the brain, and how sensitive we are as children to these environmental effects. Words--verbal harassment--from peers (and, as a previous study from these researchers showed, verbal abuse from a child's parents) can cause far more than emotional harm.

Early childhood experience can either nourish or stifle brain development, and the consequences are physical, personal, and societal. Childhood taunting and verbal bullying have always been a problem, but many feel that civility, courtesy, polite social interactions, have declined markedly from the environment that today's adults experienced as children. Many schools are more hostile places than schools once were, and new technologies, such as the internet, offer more opportunities for taunting and humiliation of children. If this is true, modern conditions or attitudes that tolerate verbal abuse of children by their peers are an incubator for developing brains with abnormalities in the corpus callosum and an elevated risk of psychiatric problems. The critical concern for ridding our environment of neurotoxins must also include "neurotoxins" children are exposed to in their social environment.

(Note: for new research showing an impaired ability to make moral judgments in people with defects in the corpus callosum connecting the left and right sides of their brain, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-douglas-fields/of-two-minds-on-morality....)

Photo credit: dailymail.co.uk

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Sticks and Stones--Hurtful Words Damage the Brain

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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me... We all know how untrue that childhood incantation is. Words do hurt. Ridicule, distain, humiliation, taunting, all cause injury, and when it is delivered in childhood from a child's peers, verbal abuse causes more than emotional trauma.

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“Why Do People Bully? The Scientific Reasons” by Ditch the Label explains that people who are going through a negative stressor or trauma in their life have a difficult time coping. The brain is a delicate structure and can be damaged by tragic events that have happened to a person. To go further it is necessary to learn how the brain develops. As I read the articles, I became aware that the human brain takes years to develop.

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Why do People Bully?

According to our latest research, 1 in 2 people have experienced bullying in some form in the last 12-months. And trust us when we say, we know how difficult it can be to go through it, especially if you don't fully understand the psychology of bullying.

In this article, we will be exploring the reasons why people bully, using the latest research and psychology to give you a greater understanding of the motives of those who are either bullying you right now or who have done so in the past.

You may have assumed that you get bullied for whatever makes you different or unique, for example: your race, religion, culture, sexual or gender identity, line of work, fashion sense or weight. By the end of this article, you will know that this is not the case at all.

If you want to talk about it - join our community today to start a conversation about bullying and speak to our amazing digital mentors who can help you anonymously without judgement.

The Psychology of Being Bullied

We will explore the reasons why later on in this article, but most frequently, those who bully others are looking to gain a feeling of power, purpose and control over you.

The easiest way of doing this is to focus on something that is unique about you - either preying on or creating new insecurity with an intent to hurt you either physically or emotionally.

What happens is, we, as the people experiencing bullying, start to internalise it and we become self-critical. We want to understand the reasons why we are being targeted and we start to blame ourselves.

As a result, we try to change or mask that unique characteristic in order to avoid the bullying. We dye our hair, bleach our skin, date people we aren't interested in and cover up our bodies like they are something to be ashamed of.

It starts to affect our behaviour and the ways in which we see ourselves, which in turn, can go on to impact both our mental and physical health.

The way we see bullying is all wrong. It isn't because we are different in some way.

The Real Reasons Why People Bully Others

In a recent Ditch the Label study, we spoke to 7,347 people about bullying. We asked respondents to define bullying and then later asked if, based on their own definition, they had ever bullied anybody. 14% of our overall sample, so that's 1,239 people, said yes. What we then did was something that had never been done on this scale before; we asked them intimate questions about their lives, exploring things like stress and trauma, home lives, relationships and how they feel about themselves.

In fact, we asked all 7,347 respondents the same questions and then compared the answers from those who had never bullied, those who had bullied at least once and those who bully others daily. This then gave us very strong, scientific and factual data to identify the real reasons why people bully others.

It also scientifically proves that the reason people get bullied is never, contrary to popular belief, because of the unique characteristics of the person experiencing the bullying. So, why do people bully?

Stress and Trauma:

Our data shows that those who bully are far more likely than average to have experienced a stressful or traumatic situation in the past 5 years. Examples include their parents/guardians splitting up, the death of a relative or the gaining of a little brother or sister.

It makes sense because we all respond to stress in very different ways. Some of us use positive behaviours, such as meditation, exercise and talking therapy - all designed to relieve the stress.

Others use negative behaviours such as bullying, violence and alcohol abuse, which temporarily mask the issues but usually make them worse in the long-term.

The research shows that some people simply do not know how to positively respond to stress and so default to bullying others as a coping mechanism.

Aggressive Behaviours:

66% of the people who had admitted to bullying somebody else were male. Take a minute to think about how guys are raised in our culture and compare that to the ways in which girls are raised. The moment a guy starts to show any sign of emotion, he's told to man up and to stop being a girl.

For girls, it's encouraged that they speak up about issues that affect them.

For guys, it's discouraged and so they start to respond with aggressive behaviours, such as bullying, as a way of coping with issues that affect them. This is why guys are more likely than girls to physically attack somebody or to commit crimes. It isn't something they are born with, it's a learned behaviour that is actively taught by society using dysfunctional gender norms and roles.

Low Self-Esteem:

In order to mask how they actually feel about themselves, some people who bully focus attention on someone else. They try to avoid any negative attention directed at them by deflecting. But know they might look in the mirror at home and hate the way they look.

There is so much pressure to live up to beauty and fitness standards that we are taught to compare ourselves to others, instead of embracing our own beauty.

They've Been Bullied:

Our research shows that those who have experienced bullying are twice as likely to go on and bully others. Maybe they were bullied as kids in the past, or maybe they are being bullied now.

Often it's used as a defence mechanism and people tend to believe that by bullying others, they will become immune to being bullied themselves. In fact, it just becomes a vicious cycle of negative behaviours.

Difficult Home Life:

1 in 3 of those who bully people daily told us that they feel like their parents/guardians don't have enough time to spend with them. They are more likely to come from larger families and are more likely to live with people other than their biological parents.

There are often feelings of rejection from the very people who should love them unconditionally. They are also much more likely to come from violent households with lots of arguments and hostility.

Low Access to Education:

Without access to education, hate-based conversation directed at others may be the norm. They may not understand what hate speech is and why speaking about people in a derogatory way is not appropriate.

Relationships:

Finally, those who bully are more likely to feel like their friendships and family relationships aren't very secure. In order to keep friendships, they might be pressured by their peers to behave in a certain way.

They are more likely to feel like those who are closest to them make them do things that they don't feel comfortable doing and aren't very supportive or loving.

So there you have it, some of the most common reasons why people bully others.

If you are being bullied, it's time to put the knowledge to the test. Carry on reading with our article on overcoming bullying. If you are doing the bullying, here are 7 things that you can do to overcome it.

If you are looking for more help - our community is a safe space to discuss your issues and get support from trained digital mentors who will help you without judgement.

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Why do People Bully? The Scientific Reasons - Ditch the Label

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According to our latest research, 1 in 2 people have experienced bullying in some form in the last 12-months. And trust us when we say, we know how difficult it can be to go through it, especially if you don't fully understand the psychology of bullying.

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research by erin Burke Quinlan  of Kings College London, UK. She did the first study to show that bullying during a young age affects the mental health because the brain structure changes. Her study involves 682 people between 14 and 19 years of age who completed questionnaires and brain scans. This was called the, “IMAGEN Long Term Project”. 36 people had suffered from being bullied. When they compared their brains through brains scans they discovered the following; “changes in the brain volume, as well as the levels of depression, anxiety and hyperactivity at the age of nineteen.

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How bullying affects the brain

New research from King's College London identifies a possible mechanism that shows how bullying may influence the structure of the adolescent brain, suggesting the effects of constantly being bullied are more than just psychological.

The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, shows that there may be physical structural differences in the brains of adolescents who are regularly victimized, and this could increase the chance that they suffer from mental illness. The research is the first to suggest that chronic peer victimisation during adolescence impacts mental health via structural brain changes.

Researchers analysed data, questionnaires and brain scans of 682 participants from England, Ireland, France and Germany. These participants were part of the IMAGEN long-term project that assessed the brain development and mental health of adolescents. As part of this project, high resolution brain scans of participants were taken when they were 14 and 19 years old.

At the ages of 14, 16 and 19 these participants also had to complete questionnaires about whether they had been bullied, and to what extent. Overall, the results showed that 36 of the 682 young people were found to have experienced chronic bullying. The data of these participants were compared with those of the others who had experienced less chronic/severe bullying. Changes in brain volume as well as the levels of depression, anxiety and hyperactivity at age 19 were taken into account.

The subsequent findings validate and extend the literature linking peer victimisation with mental health problems. But the novel finding is that bullying is linked to decreases in the volume of parts of the brain called the caudate and putamen. These changes were found to partly explain the relationship between high peer victimisation and higher levels of general anxiety at age 19.

Lead researcher Dr Erin Burke Quinlan from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience says: 'Although not classically considered relevant to anxiety, the importance of structural changes in the putamen and caudate to the development of anxiety most likely lies in their contribution to related behaviours such as reward sensitivity, motivation, conditioning, attention, and emotional processing.'

The researchers say it is worrying that as many as 30 per cent of young people could be victimised in one way or another by their peers, with some having to endure such treatment on an almost daily basis, and emphasizes that adolescence is not only a time of new experiences and stresses, but also a period of extensive brain development. They recommend that every effort should be made to limit bullying before it becomes a severe problem that might lead to changes in a young person's brain and the development of mental health issues.
Paper reference
' Peer victimization and its impact on adolescent brain development and psychopathology' Burke Quinlan et al, Molecular Psychiatry, DOI: 10.1038/s41380-018-0297-9
Contact
For further media information please contact: Robin Bisson, Senior Press Officer, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, robin.bisson@kcl.ac.uk / +44 20 7848 5377 / +44 7718 697176.

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King's College London - How bullying affects the brain

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New research from King's College London identifies a possible mechanism that shows how bullying may influence the structure of the adolescent brain, suggesting the effects of constantly being bullied are more than just psychological.

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Nancy Gubert discussed in her blog , “5 Stages of Human Brain Development” in stage 3, ages 7 to 22 years there are changes to the brain.  She explains, "The neural connection or grey matter is still pruning, wiring of brain still in progress, the fatty tissues surrounding neurons or white matter increase and assist with speeding up electrical impulses and decision making".  With this understanding of brain growth and development, it then makes sense that if the information and data gathered by the human is negative and harmful, it only lends to the theory that bullying affects the brain.

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Throughout the lifetime of the human brain it continues to undergo changes. I cannot stress the importance of each stage and how we need to nourish and protect our brain growth from 0 to 100 and hopefully beyond!

Let's review each of the five stages of human brain growth:
Stage 1: 0 to 10 months

Neurons and connections growing.

Pregnant woman should stay as stress-free as possible, take folic acid, B6 & B12, stimulate this young developing brain with sounds and sensations. Mother should avoid toxins, cigarettes, heavy metals, alcohol, drugs.

Stage 2: birth to 6 years

Development of voluntary movement, reasoning, perception, frontal lobes active in development of emotions, attachments, planning, working memory, and perception. A sense of self is developing and life experiences shape the emotional well being.

By age six, the brain is 95% its adult weight and peak of energy consumption.

Caregivers need to provide nurturing environment and daily individualized communication. Negative or harsh treatment may come with emotional consequences in the future.

Stage 3: 7 to 22 years

The neural connections or 'grey' matter is still pruning, wiring of brain still in progress, the fatty tissues surrounding neurons or 'white' matter increase and assist with speeding up electrical impulses and stabilize connections. The prefrontal cortex is the last to mature and it involves the control of impulses and decision-making.

Therefore, teenagers need to learn to control reckless, irrational and irritable behavior. Avoiding drugs, alcohol, smoking, unprotected sex and substance abuse.

Stage 4: 23 to 65 years

Finally, the brain reaches its peak power around age 22 and lasts for 5 more years. Afterwards, it's a downhill pattern. Last to mature and the first to go are the brain functionality of executive control occurring in the prefrontal and temporal cortices. Memory for recalling episodes start to decline, processing speed slows and working memory is storing less information.

Best approach is to stay mentally active, learn new things, stay physically active and eat a very healthy diet. Avoid toxins, cigarettes, alcohol and mind-altering drugs.

Stage 5: older than 65 years

Brain cells are lost in the critical areas such as the hippocampus responsible for processing memories.

Learn new skills, practice mediation to promote neutral emotions, exercise to improve abstract reasoning and concentration.

Avoid stress or incorporate stress reducing mediation and exercises.

Eat a healthy diet with foods to nourish one's level of dopamine.

Did you know that certain foods like sugar can set off a cascade of brain changes.

With Alzheimer's disease at epidemic numbers with over five million Americans living with the disease, it is important to be aware that there is a prevention strategy of incorporating a healthy lifestyle.

Keep the learning going... to revolutionize your health, rebuild your relationship with food, sleep, stress and see amazing results!

Tags: 5 Stages of Human Brain Development, ADD, autism, Brain Health, Diet, Memory, nutrition, Wellness

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5 Stages of Human Brain Development | Nancy Guberti, M.S., C.N.

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Throughout the lifetime of the human brain it continues to undergo changes. I cannot stress the importance of each stage and how we need to nourish and protect our brain growth from 0 to 100 and hopefully beyond! Let's review each of the five stages of human brain growth: Stage 1: 0 to 10 months Neurons and connections growing.

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the article, “What are the most interesting ideas of Sigmund Freud” by Saul McLeod states that sigmund freud was the person who found psychoanalysis; the method for treating mental illness and a theory that explains human behavior. “Freud believed that events in our childhood have a great influence on our adult lives, shaping our personality. For example, anxiety originating from traumatic experiences in a person's past is hidden from consciousness, and may cause problems during adulthood”. That our brain and our thought are affected by many things, “We don’t typically know the roots of our own choices. Our brains constantly pull information from the environment and use it to steer our behavior.” This ideology leads to the theory that bully does affect our brain.

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Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) was the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and a theory explaining human behavior.

Freud believed that events in our childhood have a great influence on our adult lives, shaping our personality. For example, anxiety originating from traumatic experiences in a person's past is hidden from consciousness and may cause problems during adulthood (neuroses).

Thus, when we explain our behavior to ourselves or others (conscious mental activity), we rarely give a true account of our motivation. This is not because we are deliberately lying. While human beings are great deceivers of others; they are even more adept at self-deception.

Freud's life work was dominated by his attempts to penetrate this often subtle and elaborate camouflage that obscures the hidden structure and processes of personality.

His lexicon has become embedded within the vocabulary of Western society. Words he introduced through his theories are now used by everyday people, such as anal (personality), libido, denial, repression, cathartic, Freudian slip, and neurotic.

Who is Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud, born on May 6, 1856, in what is now Příbor, Czech Republic (then part of the Austrian Empire), is hailed as the father of psychoanalysis. He was the eldest of eight children in a Jewish family.

Freud initially wanted to become a law professional but later developed an interest in medicine. He entered the University of Vienna in 1873, graduating with an MD in 1881. His primary interests included neurology and neuropathology. He was particularly interested in the condition of hysteria and its psychological causes.

In 1885, Freud received a grant to study with Jean-Martin Charcot, a renowned neurologist who used hypnosis to treat women suffering from what was then called "hysteria." This experience sparked Freud's interest in the unconscious mind, a theme that would recur throughout his career.

In 1886, Freud returned to Vienna, married Martha Bernays, and set up a private practice to treat nervous disorders. His work during this time led to his revolutionary concepts of the human mind and the development of the psychoanalytic method.

Freud introduced several influential concepts, including the Oedipus complex, dream analysis, and the structural model of the psyche divided into the id, ego, and superego. He published numerous works throughout his career, the most notable being " The Interpretation of Dreams" (1900), " The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" (1901), and " Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality " (1905).

Despite controversy and opposition, Freud continued to develop his theories and expand the field of psychoanalysis. He was deeply affected by the outbreak of World War I and later by the rise of the Nazis in Germany. In 1938, due to the Nazi threat, he emigrated to London with his wife and youngest daughter.

Freud died in London on September 23, 1939, but his influence on psychology, literature, and culture remains profound and pervasive.

He radically changed our understanding of the human mind, emphasizing the power of unconscious processes and pioneering therapeutic techniques that continue to be used today.

Sigmund Freud's Theories & Contributions

1. Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud is best known for developing psychoanalysis, a therapeutic technique for treating mental health disorders by exploring unconscious thoughts and feelings.

2. Unconscious Mind: Freud (1900, 1905) developed a topographical model of the mind, describing the features of the mind's structure and function. Freud used the analogy of an iceberg to describe the three levels of the mind.

3. Personality: Freud proposed a tripartite model of the human mind, composed of the id, ego, and superego. The id represents primal desires, the ego balances the id and reality, and the superego represents societal norms and morals.
The id, ego, and superego have most commonly been conceptualized as three essential parts of the human personality.

4. Psychosexual Development: Freud's controversial theory of psychosexual development suggests that early childhood experiences and stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) shape our adult personality and behavior.

His theory of psychosexual stages of development is predicated by the concept that childhood experiences create the adult personality and that problems in early life would come back to haunt the individual as a mental illness.

5. Dream Analysis: Freud believed dreams were a window into the unconscious mind and developed methods for analyzing dream content for repressed thoughts and desires.

Dreams represent unfulfilled wishes from the id, trying to break through to the conscious. But because these desires are often unacceptable, they are disguised or censored using such defenses as symbolism.

Freud believed that by undoing the dreamwork, the analyst could study the manifest content (what they dreamt) and interpret the latent content ( what it meant) by understanding the symbols.

6. Defense Mechanisms: Freud proposed several defense mechanisms, like repression and projection, which the ego employs to handle the tension and conflicts among the id, superego, and the demands of reality.

Sigmund Freud's Patients

Sigmund Freud's clinical work with several patients led to major breakthroughs in psychoanalysis and a deeper understanding of the human mind. Here are summaries of some of his most notable cases:

1. Anna O. (Bertha Pappenheim): Known as the 'birth of psychoanalysis,' Anna O. was a patient of Freud's colleague Josef Breuer. However, her case heavily influenced Freud's thinking.

She suffered from various symptoms, including hallucinations and paralysis, which Freud interpreted as signs of hysteria caused by repressed traumatic memories. The "talking cure" method with Anna O. would later evolve into Freudian psychoanalysis.

2. Dora (Ida Bauer): Dora, a pseudonym Freud used, was a teenager suffering from what he diagnosed as hysteria. Her symptoms included aphonia (loss of voice) and a cough.

Freud suggested her issues were due to suppressed sexual desires, particularly those resulting from a complex series of relationships in her family. The Dora case is famous for the subject's abrupt termination of therapy, and for the criticisms Freud received regarding his handling of the case.

3. Little Hans (Herbert Graf): Little Hans, a five-year-old boy, feared horses. Freud never met Hans but used information from the boy's father to diagnose him.

He proposed that Little Hans' horse phobia was symbolic of a deeper fear related to the Oedipus Complex - unconscious feelings of affection for his mother and rivalry with his father. The case of Little Hans is often used as an example of Freud's theory of the Oedipal Complex in children.

4. Rat Man (Ernst Lanzer): Rat Man came to Freud suffering from obsessive thoughts and fears related to rats, a condition known as obsessional neurosis.

Freud connected his symptoms to suppressed guilt and repressed sexual desires. The treatment of Rat Man further expanded Freud's work on understanding the role of internal conflicts and unconscious processes in mental health disorders.

5. Wolf Man (Sergei Pankejeff): Wolf Man was a wealthy Russian aristocrat who came to Freud with various symptoms, including a recurring dream about wolves.

Freud's analysis, focusing on childhood memories and dreams, led him to identify the presence of repressed memories and the influence of the Oedipus Complex. Wolf Man's treatment is often considered one of Freud's most significant and controversial cases.

In the highly repressive "Victorian" society in which Freud lived and worked, women, in particular, were forced to repress their sexual needs. In many cases, the result was some form of neurotic illness.

Freud sought to understand the nature and variety of these illnesses by retracing the sexual history of his patients. This was not primarily an investigation of sexual experiences as such. Far more important were the patient's wishes and desires, their experience of love, hate, shame, guilt, and fear - and how they handled these powerful emotions.

Freud's Followers

Freud attracted many followers, who formed a famous group in 1902 called the "Psychological Wednesday Society." The group met every Wednesday in Freud's waiting room.

As the organization grew, Freud established an inner circle of devoted followers, the so-called "Committee" (including Sàndor Ferenczi, and Hanns Sachs (standing) Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Max Eitingon, and Ernest Jones).

At the beginning of 1908, the committee had 22 members and was renamed the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

Neo-Freudians

The term "neo-Freudians" refers to psychologists who were initially followers of Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) but later developed their own theories, often modifying or challenging Freud's ideas.

Here are summaries of some of the most notable neo-Freudians:

1. Otto Rank: Rank (1884 - 1939) was an early collaborator with Freud and played a significant role in the development of psychoanalysis. He proposed the "trauma of birth" as a critical event influencing the psyche. Later, he shifted focus to the relationship between therapist and client, influencing the development of humanistic therapies.

2. Harry Stack Sullivan: Sullivan (1892 - 1949) developed interpersonal psychoanalysis, emphasizing the role of interpersonal relationships and social experiences in personality development and mental disorders. He proposed the concept of the "self-system" formed through experiences of approval and disapproval during childhood.

3. Anna Freud: Freud's youngest daughter significantly contributed to psychoanalysis, particularly in child psychology. Anna Freud (1895 - 1982) expanded on her father's work, emphasizing the importance of ego defenses in managing conflict and preserving mental health.

4. Erich Fromm: Fromm (1900-1980) was a German-American psychoanalyst associated with the Frankfurt School, who emphasized culture's role in developing personality. He advocated psychoanalysis as a tool for curing cultural problems and thus reducing mental illness.

Critical Evaluation

Does evidence support Freudian psychology? Freud's theory is good at explaining but not predicting behavior (which is one of the goals of science).

For this reason, Freud's theory is unfalsifiable - it can neither be proved true or refuted. For example, the unconscious mind is difficult to test and measure objectively. Overall, Freud's theory is highly unscientific.

Despite the skepticism of the unconscious mind, cognitive psychology has identified unconscious processes, such as procedural memory (Tulving, 1972), automatic processing (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Stroop, 1935), and social psychology has shown the importance of implicit processing (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Such empirical findings have demonstrated the role of unconscious processes in human behavior.

However, most evidence for Freud's theories is from an unrepresentative sample. He mostly studied himself, his patients, and only one child (e.g., Little Hans).

The main problem here is that the case studies are based on studying one person in detail, and regarding Freud, the individuals in question are most often middle-aged women from Vienna (i.e., his patients).

This makes generalizations to the wider population (e.g., the whole world) difficult. However, Freud thought this unimportant, believing in only a qualitative difference between people.

Freud may also have shown research bias in his interpretations - he may have only paid attention to information that supported his theories, and ignored information and other explanations that did not fit them.

However, Fisher & Greenberg (1996) argue that Freud's theory should be evaluated in terms of specific hypotheses rather than a whole. They concluded that there is evidence to support Freud's concepts of oral and anal personalities and some aspects of his ideas on depression and paranoia.

They found little evidence of the Oedipal conflict and no support for Freud's views on women's sexuality and how their development differs from men'.

References

Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The unbearable automaticity of being. American psychologist, 54(7), 462.

Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1895). Studies on hysteria. Standard Edition 2: London.

Fisher, S., & Greenberg, R. P. (1996). Freud scientifically reappraised: Testing the theories and therapy. John Wiley & Sons.

Freud, S. (1894). The neuro-psychoses of defence. SE, 3: 41-61.

Freud, S. (1896). Further remarks on the neuro-psychoses of defence. SE, 3: 157-185.

Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. S.E., 4-5.

Freud, S. (1901). The psychopathology of everyday life. SE, 6. London: Hogarth.

Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. Se, 7, 125-243.

Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious. SE, 14: 159-204.

Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 1-64.

Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. SE, 19: 1-66.

Freud, S. (1925). Negation. Standard edition, 19, 235-239.

Freud, S. (1961). The resistances to psycho-analysis. In T he Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIX (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and other works (pp. 211-224).

Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological review, 102(1), 4.

Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of experimental psychology, 18(6), 643.

Tulving, E. (1972). Episodic and semantic memory. In E. Tulving & W. Donaldson (Eds.), Organization of Memory, (pp. 381-403). New York: Academic Press.

FAQs

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Sigmund Freud: Theory & Contribution to Psychology

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Sigmund Freud (1856 to 1939) was the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and a theory explaining human behavior.

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Essay

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The dangerous power of Trump’s ‘fairy tale’ nicknames by Jon Allsop talks about the way President Trump bullies people through his tweets. The article states, "DURING HIS 2016 PRESIDENTIAL BID,Donald Trump wielded insulting nicknames to brutal effect. In the primaries, he ran not against Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz, but against “Low Energy Jeb,” “Little Marco,” and “Lyin’ Ted." His behavior affects everyone in the country.

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During his 2016 presidential bid, Donald Trump wielded insulting nicknames to brutal effect. In the primaries, he ran not against Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz, but against "Low Energy Jeb," "Little Marco," and "Lyin' Ted." In the general election, he routinely assailed "Crooked Hillary" Clinton, and won. Trump hasn't stopped with the epithets since taking office-they're a hallmark of his rhetorical style. Recently, the candidates vying for the 2020 Democratic nomination have given him fresh ammunition. Bernie Sanders is "crazy," just as he was in 2016. Amy Klobuchar is a "Snowman(woman)!"; Elizabeth Warren is "Pocahontas." Joe Biden-whose candidacy has clearly preoccupied Trump-is "sleepy."

On Friday, Trump stretched the latter adjective. "Looks to me like it's going to be SleepyCreepy Joe over Crazy Bernie," Trump tweeted, of the Democratic race. "Everyone else is fading fast!" He wasn't done there. Later in the day, in an interview with Politico, the president called Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old Democratic candidate (and mayor of South Bend, Indiana), "Alfred E. Neuman," a reference to the dimpled, gap-toothed kid on the cover of Mad magazine. The quote drove its own mini-news cycle. Bloomberg, CBS News, the New York Post, The Hill and others carried it as a story in its own right. "Who is Alfred E. Neuman?" the Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked; The Washington Post saw the reference as proof of a presidential "generation gap." In San Francisco, Politico asked Buttigieg for a response. "I'll be honest, I had to Google that," he said. The retort made headlines, as did Mad's retort to the retort: "Who is Pete Buttigieg?" Whose burn was sickest? Who cares?
ICYMI: Audit suggests Google favors a small number of major outlets

Regrettably, none of this is a laughing matter. In 2017, I wrote for CJR about the dangerous linguistic power of Trump's nicknames, which recall the age-old storytelling techniques found in myths and fairy tales. The nicknames, I wrote, trade in "strength, moral failure, and cartoonishly rendered virtue," appealing to our "childlike desire to make an easily digestible morality tale of a complicated world." The "pejorative adjective and proper noun" structure-see: "Crooked Hillary" or "SleepyCreepy Joe"-is particularly potent. David Beaver, a professor of linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, told me that the sentence "Hillary is crooked" goes into our brains through the intellect: it's for us to weigh whether it's true or not. The epithet "Crooked Hillary," by contrast, presupposes the truth of Hillary's crookedness. "'Crooked Hillary' is emotional, it has this visceral way of just grabbing you," Beaver said.

"Alfred E. Neuman" doesn't follow this structure, but a similar principle applies. Consciously or not, Trump uses epithets and nicknames to set the narrative around his political opponents, boxing them in with unflattering stereotypes that can be hard to escape. "Low Energy" continues to stick to Jeb Bush years after Trump coined it, as "Lyin' Ted" does to Cruz. At best, Trump's nicknames caricature complicated people-on Friday, Trump literally turned Buttigieg into a cartoon of callow goofiness. At worst, they're lies dressed up as jokes. Either way, Trump "uses these pejorative adjectives in a way which really does overpower the opposition," Jack Zipes, a fairy tale expert who has taught at the University of Minnesota, told me in 2017. In the process, rival candidates are dehumanized.

Much of the mainstream press is hyper-vigilant about Trump's lies and misstatements-we are commonly told that they're an urgent threat to our democracy and civic discourse. It's odd then, that so many outlets still treat Trump's nicknames as an amusing distraction, not the subtle, dangerous manipulation of political discourse they actually represent. We don't just amplify these insults when Trump wields them: we almost invite him to coin them, then dredge them up unprompted in subsequent coverage. We should resist those impulses, or at least be clear-eyed about what Trump is trying to do. "Alfred E. Neuman" might be funny. But let's not amuse ourselves to death.

Below, more on Trump, nicknames, and the 2020 presidential race:

An origin story: In my 2017 piece, I made the case that Trump may have borrowed his nickname format from the press, in general, and New York tabloids, in particular. Writing for The Atlantic last week, Matthew Pressman explored the broader effect the New York Daily News may have had on young Trump. As well as pushing right-wing populism, the paper "gave insulting nicknames to its political opponents. Harry Truman was 'High Tax Harry' or 'Little Harry'; the Democratic White House adviser David Niles was 'Devious Dave.'"

Send in the clowns: Earlier this month, a supporter asked Biden whether he would return Trump's insults. Biden said he would not, then called Trump a "clown" anyway. For The New York Times, Jonathan Martin notes that Biden's staff has controlled media access to the candidate, limiting his potential to commit "gaffes." (The framing of the story caught some criticism on Twitter.)

O'Rourke's drift: In March, Beto O'Rourke jumped into the presidential race with a splash, attracting intense media interest including a Vanity Fair cover story. Since then, however, the coverage has quieted-in part because O'Rourke hasn't aggressively courted it. Recognizing that his current strategy isn't working, O'Rourke is planning to "reintroduce" himself, the AP's Will Weissert and Steve Peoples report: he "is scheduled to appear on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show on Monday night and ABC's The View the next day."

Breakin' up is hard to do: Yesterday, Kamala Harris, who is also in the 2020 running, told CNN's Jake Tapper that she would "seriously take a look" at breaking up Facebook-the platform is "essentially a utility that has gone unregulated," she said. On ABC, Cory Booker hit a different note, telling Jonathan Karl that promising to break up companies without "some kind of process" was "like a Donald Trump thing to say." On Twitter, Politico's Cristiano Lima assessed where different Democratic candidates stand on cracking tech monopolies. So far, only Elizabeth Warren and Tulsi Gabbard seem committed to the idea.

Other notable stories:

Breaking this morning: prosecutors in Sweden announced that they will reopen an investigation into a rape claim against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who was arrested in London last month after Ecuador kicked him out of its embassy in the city. In 2012, Assange took refuge in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden; Assange's supporters called the rape charges a pretext to forward him to the US over his publication of leaked materials. Overnight, WikiLeaks said the reopening of the case would give Assange-who is now formally subject to a US extradition request-"a chance to clear his name." Sweden could complicate efforts to bring Assange to the US by posing a rival request.

On Friday, in San Francisco, police raided the home of Bryan Carmody, a freelance journalist-Carmody told the San Francisco Chronicle that a team of officers tried to break down his gate with a sledgehammer, then cuffed him, entered his home, and seized electronic devices. Police have been investigating the source of a leaked report on the death of Jeff Adachi, San Francisco's former public defender, which Carmody obtained and sold on to local TV news stations. Meanwhile, in Connecticut, Tara O'Neill, a reporter with The Connecticut Post, was cuffed and detained for 30 minutes while covering a demonstration.

For the Times, Richard C. Paddock, Saw Nang, and Edward Wong look at the political dynamics behind the release, last week, of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, two Reuters journalists whose reporting led them to be jailed in Myanmar. According to the Times, the biggest obstacle to freeing the pair was not the country's military, which remains a potent force in the government, but rather Aung San Suu Kyi, its de facto civilian leader whose reputation as a pro-democracy stalwart has been tarnished since she came to power. Diplomats told the Times that Aung San Suu Kyi would sometimes explode with anger when Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo's treatment was raised with her.

Also in the Times, Jacinda Ardern-the prime minister of New Zealand whose response to the recent, livestreamed mosque shootings in Christchurch won her widespread praise-writes that governments and technology companies must take action to stop violent extremism from spreading online. On Wednesday, Ardern and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, will host politicians and tech leaders in Paris to map a path forward.

For CJR, Nicholas Diakopoulos finds-based on an audit of Google's "Top Stories" function-that the search giant is referring its users to a limited number of major outlets: notably CNN, the Times, and The Washington Post. "As much as our results help better describe Google's curation of news, what our study decidedly cannot say is why some sources dominate on Google," Diakopoulos writes. "We just don't know unless Google is more transparent with the editorial design and goals of news curation."

Only 21 percent of Americans have ever spoken to or been interviewed by a local journalist, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. The figure differs by demographic, with white, college-educated, and older respondents all more likely to have had contact with a reporter than comparable groups. The overall total shows a decrease on figures reported in 2016. Pew's Elizabeth Grieco suggests withering local newsrooms and increased journalistic reliance on social media may be responsible.

For CJR, Rosalind Donald argues that newsrooms should not silo climate coverage: "Climate change is an economic story and a public health story; global warming shapes supply chains, water resources, tech infrastructure, community development and loss, and on and on. Yet climate coverage has historically been relegated to the science and environmental beats, outside the realm of hard news."

And in Afghanistan, Mena Mangal, a prominent journalist and women's rights advocate, was shot dead in Kabul on Saturday, one week after posting on Facebook that she feared for her life. It's not yet clear who killed Mangal. Her death comes little more than a year after 10 Afghan journalists were killed in a single day, nine of them in a suicide bombing in Kabul.

ICYMI: White House revokes press passes for dozens of journalists
Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist. He writes CJR's newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.

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The dangerous power of Trump's 'fairy tale' nicknames

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During his 2016 presidential bid, Donald Trump wielded insulting nicknames to brutal effect. In the primaries, he ran not against Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz, but against "Low Energy Jeb," "Little Marco," and "Lyin' Ted." In the general election, he routinely assailed "Crooked Hillary" Clinton, and won.

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An Interview with Raymond Bauer states his experience with bullying. He says kids constantly picked on him for wearing glasses, being overweight and going to a learning disabilities school. He still feels the trauma of getting bullied everyday and on top of that has been diagnosed with anxiety.

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In reviewing the video with Dr. William Copeland and Dr. Christopher Sarampote discussed that the research on the affects of bullying is a new study. They both agreed that there are long term physiological conditions. In their study they categorized people into four categories; people who had been bullied, people who weren't bullied, people who were bullies and people who had gotten bullied and became bullies. They found that the people who were bullies didn't suffer physiological issues but still show attendance to have bully like behavior while the ones who did get bullied suffered physiological issues and had a hard time coping in society.

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National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

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Bullying Exerts Psychiatric Effects Into Adulthood

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In the academic journal "Bullying the Brain? Longitudinal Links Between Childhood Peer Victimization, Cortisol, and Adolescent Brain Structure" by Mieke R. du Plessis, Sanny Smeekens, Antonius H. N. Cillessen, Sarah Whittle, and Berna Guroglu was based on a study to see if there were links between childhood peer victimization cortisol and adolescents brain structure. There were fifty kids in the study and they had to take an exam with four questions to help determine if they had been a victim or peer victimization. They had determined 1. they boys are more sensitive to stress; this is proven because they had high cortisol. 2. They had found surface areas of the brain were different in children who had been victimzed. The results indicate that there is a differential influence of cortisol on the relationship between victimization and the brain structure

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Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands

Department of Psychology, Open University, Heerlen, Netherlands

Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Department of Psychiatry, The University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Background: Childhood peer victimization is a stressful life experience associated with long-lasting adverse psychological consequences. While there is some evidence that victimization is associated with alterations in brain function, little is known about effects on brain structure. This study explored the relationships between childhood peer victimization, cortisol, and adolescent ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) structure in a sample of healthy children.

Methods: A total of 50 ( M age = 9.29 years at baseline) children participated in this longitudinal study. We examined whether diurnal cortisol levels (assessed at baseline) moderated the link between children's self-reported peer victimization (assessed at baseline) and vlPFC surface area, gray matter volume, and thickness 5 years later.

Results: For boys, cortisol levels moderated the association between victimization and brain structure. For boys with a low daily cortisol output (assessed as area under the curve; AUC), high victimization was associated with a smaller right vlPFC surface area, and for boys with a high AUC, high victimization was associated with a larger right vlPFC surface area. In addition, for boys with a steeper diurnal slope, high victimization was associated with a smaller right vlPFC surface area, and for boys with a low flatter diurnal slope, high victimization was associated with a larger right vlPFC surface area.

Conclusion: These results indicate the differential influence of cortisol on the relationship between victimization and brain structure. Findings suggest that victimization may have differential effects on brain development in boys who are more versus less biologically sensitive to stress.

Introduction

Peer victimization is characterized as being the habitual target of peers' physical or emotional aggression ( Olweus, 1993). Peer victimization is a global issue affecting around 30% of children in any given month ( United Nations Children's Fund, 2007) and for about 11% of children, this abuse occurs on a regular basis. Peer victimization is often a stable construct where children who are victimized at one point in time tend to be victimized throughout their childhood and adolescence ( Kumpalainen et al., 1999). Sex is a robust correlate of bullying with boys both at greater risk of perpetrating and experiencing peer victimization than girls (e.g., Nansel et al., 2001).

There is mounting evidence that peer victimization is an experience that can have long-lasting adverse psychological consequences. For example, being victimized during school years has been shown to be detrimental to academic functioning, social relationships, self-perception, cognition, physical health, and mental health (e.g., Austin and Joseph, 1996; Grills and Ollendick, 2002; Bellmore and Cillessen, 2006; Esbensen and Carson, 2009; Juvonen et al., 2011). Peer victimization has also been associated with altered neurobiology, and indeed, it has been suggested that this is one mechanism by which victimization can impact psychological functioning ( Rudolph et al., 2016), with the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) being particularly implicated. For example, functional neuroimaging studies show that social exclusion is associated with activation in the vlPFC, and vlPFC activation correlates negatively with social distress during exclusion ( Eisenberger et al., 2003; Masten et al., 2009; Yanagisawa et al., 2011). Stimulation of the vlPFC with transcranial direct stimulation during social exclusion dampens distress ( Riva et al., 2015). Children who are habitually excluded by their peers show more lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) activity in the face of social stress ( Will et al., 2016) and when resisting risky behaviors ( Telzer et al., 2017), and show greater vlPFC activation when receiving negative social feedback than do children who are not peer-rejected ( Lee et al., 2014).

While the findings linking peer victimization to altered neurobiology are intriguing, there are two critical gaps in the literature. First, the majority of relevant studies have focused on brain function. Presently the associations between victimization and brain structure remain obscure. Investigation of PFC structure is of interest given that many of the psychological consequences of peer victimization have been associated with structural alterations in the PFC. For example, reductions in PFC surface area have been found in adolescents with depression ( Schmaal et al., 2017), and reduced vlPFC volumes have been found in anxiety disorder patients ( Shang et al., 2014). The experience of other types of environmental adversity has been associated with reduced vlPFC thickness in adolescents ( Gold et al., 2016).

Second, neurobiological research has not taken into account the fact that not all children exposed to peer victimization experience adverse consequences. To understand the nature of differential response to peer victimization, individual differences in vulnerability or sensitivity factors need to be investigated. In this regard, individual differences in the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis may account for variations in the effects of peer victimization.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis (HPA-axis; Hansen et al., 2006; Vaillancourt et al., 2008) regulates the secretion of cortisol. The basal secretion of cortisol shows a stable diurnal pattern. In general, the diurnal cortisol curve shows increases prior to awakening and reaches its peak 30 min after waking. This increase is known as the cortisol awakening response (CAR: e.g., Fries et al., 2009). During the rest of the day cortisol levels gradually decrease ( Hostinar and Gunnar, 2013). The CAR has been suggested as a measure of acute HPA-reactivity distinct from cortisol output throughout the rest of the day ( Pruessner et al., 2007). Diurnal slope, on the other hand, has been suggested as a tonic reflection of stress experienced throughout the day. It is also possible to characterize the entire cortisol output across the day by calculating the area under the curve (AUC) for all cortisol measurements on a given day ( Pruessner et al., 2007). Abnormal patterns of cortisol secretion during the day (e.g., Fries et al., 2009) as well as in response to stress are associated with physical problems ( Miller et al., 2007) and negative outcomes such as problem behavior (e.g., McBurnett et al., 2000; Alink et al., 2008) and psychopathology ( Buitelaar, 2013).

It has been posited that adolescence is an important developmental period in which the effects of earlier exposures to stress become evident where individual differences in HPA reactivity might play an important role ( Lupien et al., 2009). There is some evidence to suggest that cortisol levels may moderate the effect of peer victimization on outcomes. For example, victimization has been shown to be associated with elevated depressive symptoms only in those individuals with elevated basal cortisol levels ( Brendgen et al., 2017), and elevated cortisol response to social challenge ( Rudolph et al., 2011). These findings suggest that individuals with hyper-sensitive stress response systems may be less able to cope effectively with peer victimization. While similar research has not been performed regarding neurobiological outcomes, individual differences in HPA-axis function are likely to impact adolescent brain structure given evidence for an effect of glucocorticoid exposure on PFC structure in rodents ( Wellman, 2001), and of associations between cortisol levels and PFC volumes in humans ( Carrion et al., 2010).

To better understand the role of the HPA-axis on the consequences of bullying, the current study examined the moderating role of HPA-axis function in the link between bullying and brain structure in adolescents. We focused on individual differences in the CAR, diurnal slope, and AUC, and on vlPFC structure specifically. We expected to find a relationship between victimization and the structure of the vlPFC in a way that was dependent on individual differences in CAR, diurnal slope and AUC. Specifically, we hypothesized that victimized children with indices of HPA-axis hyperactivity/hyper-reactivity (i.e., elevated CAR, AUC and flattened slope) would have reduced vlPFC structure relative to those with higher cortisol levels. Finally, we took sex into account, given (a) sex differences in peer victimization, (b) sex differences in neural development ( Raznahan et al., 2010) and in function of the vlPFC ( Vijayakumar et al., 2014), (c) sex differences n basal cortisol secretion ( Schiefelbein and Susman, 2006), and (d) evidence for differential effects of victimization on both cortisol and brain function for boys and girls ( Stroud et al., 2002).

Materials and Methods

Participants

The sample described in the current study was recruited as part of the Nijmegen Longitudinal Study (NLS), a large ongoing longitudinal study on infant and childhood development, conducted in Nijmegen, Netherlands. The study started in 1998 with a community sample of 129 15-month-old children ( van Bakel and Riksen-Walraven, 2002). Families were recruited on the basis of records from local health-care centers in the city of Nijmegen, Netherlands and no specific exclusion criteria were employed. All families with a 15-month-old baby (i.e., 639 families) living in districts with many young families from various socioeconomic backgrounds were contacted. Of the 174 families who responded to an invitation to participate, 129 families were randomly selected (the maximum possible given the resources available for the project). Participants were assessed at 10 time points at ages 15 and 28 months, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16, and 17 years old. The current study examined the links between victimization and cortisol assessed at age 9 (Wave 5) and brain structure assessed at age 14 (Wave 8). Fifty children had brain structure measures at Wave 8 and thus comprised the final sample. The sample included five children whose parents were divorced, measured when the children were 10 years old. The mean level of education of the children's mothers, on a scale of 1 (elementary school) to 7 (college degree or more), was 5.14 ( SD = 1.57), while for fathers this was 5.14 ( SD = 1.73). Consent to participate in the study was obtained from both the child and at least one parent at all time points. The local ethics committee (CMO region Arnhem-Nijmegen, Netherlands) approved this study.

Procedure and Measures

Wave 5 Data Collection

At Wave 5 of the NLS, participants were 9 years old ( = 9.29 years, SD = 0.37; 50% boys). During a school visit, 118 children completed several questionnaires in a classroom setting, among which a questionnaire assessing peer victimization. Saliva samples were collected from the participants within 4 weeks after the school visit.

Wave 5: Self-Reported Victimization

Participants completed the self-report Olweus Bully/Victim questionnaire ( Olweus, 1986) at school during a 30-60 min classroom session. The Olweus Bully/Victim questionnaire uses four items to assess whether children are being bullied, with bullying defined as having the following characteristics: "the intention to harm the victim, the repetitive nature of bullying, and the imbalance in power between the victim and the perpetrator(s)" ( Solberg and Olweus, 2003, pp 246). Students were asked to indicate on a 5-point scale the extent to which they had been victimized at school during the past school year. The scale ranged from 1 "never," 2 "once or a few times," 3 "one or two times a month," 4 "one or two times a week," to 5 "three or more times a week." The following four questions were asked: (1) How many times in this school year has a classmate said mean things about you at school? (2) How many times this year has a classmate hit, kick, or pushed you? (3) How many times this year has a classmate shouted at you? (4) How many times this school year have your classmates bullied you? The four items were summed to yield a total victimization score, with higher scores reflecting higher self-reported victimization (Cronbach's α = 0.728).

Wave 5: Cortisol

Saliva samples were obtained on two consecutive school days (Monday and Tuesday). On each day five samples were taken: two at home in the morning (directly after awakening and 30 min later), two at school (at noon before lunch and in the afternoon before going home), and one at home before bedtime. All involved families agreed to the saliva collection procedure and 97 of 118 children completed the salivary samples at home and at school successfully. Participants with unsuccessful salivary cortisol samples were excluded because of using potentially interfering medication (for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, allergies, asthma, or diabetes), feeling ill during sampling, or returning sampling packages that may have been thawed too long. Salivary samples were sent to the Biochemisches Labor at the University of Trier, Germany, for analysis using time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay (DELFIA; Dressendörfer et al., 1992). Each child's samples were analyzed in one assay batch to minimize variability, and duplicate assays were performed to guarantee validity of analysis. If control samples showed cortisol values outside a defined range (±2 SD) the whole batch was reanalyzed. The intra-assay coefficients of variation were between 7.1 and 9%. All values >50 nmol/L were considered out of range and were assigned a value 2 SD above the mean, as suggested by Kertes and Gunnar (2004).

Of the 50 children who had brain structure measures at Wave 8, 41 had cortisol data at Wave 5. To estimate cortisol awakening response and the diurnal change in cortisol levels, data from both data collection days were averaged after calculating the CAR, diurnal slope, and area under the curve with respect to ground (AUC ground). When relating individual characteristics to cortisol levels, averaging cortisol data across days is recommended ( Pruessner et al., 2007). Further, it is of note that there was moderate to high stability in cortisol values in our sample across the 2 days (see below), and as such, averaging was thought to increase the reliability of the measures.

The cortisol awakening response (CAR) was calculated as the difference between the morning cortisol measurement (time 2) and the awakening measurement (time 1). The correlation of CAR between Day 1 and Day 2 was 0.60 ( p < 0.001). The CAR was uncorrelated with the noon, afternoon, and bedtime cortisol measures. The diurnal slope was taken as the difference between the morning cortisol measurement (time 2) and the bedtime measurement (time 5). The correlation of the diurnal slope on Day 1 and Day 2 was 0.47 ( p < 0.01). Finally, to assess children's daily cortisol secretion AUC ground was calculated using all five cortisol measurements (see Pruessner et al., 2003). One child did not provide a cortisol sample on the second day for time point three and, as a result, no AUC ground was calculated for them. The correlation of AUC ground between day 1 and day 2 was 0.98 ( p < 0.001). This correlation remained significant after removal of one outlier.

Wave 8 Data Collection

At Wave 8 of the NLS, participants were 14 years old ( = 14.64 years, SD = 0.18). This wave included a neuroimaging study where participants took part in an fMRI experiment. Of the 118 participants who participated at Wave 5, 83 participants took part in Wave 8, which involved an approximately 2.5 h protocol that also included tasks that are reported elsewhere ( Niermann et al., 2015; Tyborowska et al., 2016). Of the 83 participants, 53 who indicated no MRI contraindications (no braces, free of current psychiatric or neurological impairments, no metal implants, and right-handed) participated in the MRI session. Prior to scanning, participants were familiarized with the scanning environment with a mock scanner. The total scanning time was 50 min. Children and their parents received a financial reimbursement for their participation.

Wave 8: Neuroimaging

MRI Acquisition

The MRI data were acquired on a Siemens 3 tesla MAGNETOM Tri MRI scanner (Siemens Medical Solutions) using a 32-channel coil. Structural T1 images were acquired using an MPRAGE sequence (TR = 2300 ms; TE = 3.03 ms; 192 sagittal slices; 1.0 mm × 1.0 mm × 1.0 mm voxels; FOV = 256 mm).

Processing and ROI Delineation

Images were transferred to an SGI/Linux workstation for morphometric analysis. Cortical reconstruction was performed using the FreeSurfer image analysis suite. FreeSurfer provides a set of tools to reconstruct topologically correct and geometrically accurate surface models of the inner and outer cortical boundaries, thereby deriving multiple anatomical measures including cortical volume, thickness, and surface area. All FreeSurfer image processing was conducted on a high performance computing facility at the Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre, Melbourne, Australia.

The vlPFC ROI was created by combining the pars opercularis, pars triangularis, and pars orbitalis, as labeled by FreeSurfer ( Fischl et al., 2004; Desikan et al., 2006). In order to include only prefrontal regions, a coronal cut was applied at Talairach coordinate y = 26. This was done to conform to the conservative Talairach criteria described by Rajkowska and Goldman-Rakic (1995). Cortical thickness was measured as the distance between the gray/white matter boundary and the pial surface (i.e., gray/cerebral spinal fluid boundary) at each point on the cortical mantle. FreeSurfer's automated procedure involves the assignment of a neuroanatomical label to each voxel in an MRI volume based on probabilistic information estimated automatically from a manually labeled training set. All MRI data checking was completed by a researcher blinded to participant characteristics. All images were checked to ensure that FreeSurfer's automatic preprocessing stream was accurate. As FreeSurfer requires removal of the dura and skull in order to estimate cortical thickness, accurately, all images where dura and/or skull remained were manually edited by the first author. Three participants were subsequently excluded based on poor quality images. The data for each participant were resampled to an average participant and surface smoothing was performed using the qcache command and a 10-mm full-width half-maximum Gaussian kernel before statistical analysis.

Data Analysis

Pearson's bivariate correlations were performed to assess associations between all measures. Regression analyses were performed to test the moderating relationship of the three cortisol measures (CAR, diurnal slope, and AUC ground), and sex, on the association between self-reported victimization and vlPFC volume, surface area, and cortical thickness. All regression analyses were performed in MPlus, and full information maximum likelihood (FIML) was used to account for missing data. All regression analyses were tested against a false discovery rate (FDR; Narum, 2006) corrected alpha of 0.02727 in order to correct for the three regression analyses performed per cortisol measure. Subsequent simple slopes analyses (based on listwise data) were used to investigate the nature of significant moderator effects.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

A final sample of 50 (24 boys) participants was used in the analyses. These participants represented those with non-missing dependent variables (i.e., useable MRI data). Of these 50, CAR and diurnal slope was available for 41 children; AUC ground was available for 40 children due to missing data for one child at one of the five time points. Victimization data was available for 41 participants. The raw cortisol data were log-transformed to normalize skewness. All analyses were performed using the transformed variables. Table 1 shows the descriptive data for all study variables. Right vlPFC volume differed by sex (dummy coded; girls = 1, boys = 0), with boys having larger volume than girls. Boys and girls did not differ on victimization, bilateral vlPFC thickness, surface area, left hemisphere volume, CAR, diurnal slope, and AUC ground (see Table 2 for details). Victimization was uncorrelated with all three cortisol measures ( p > 0.05). Similarly, no significant correlations were found between victimization and vlPFC structure, or between cortisol and vlPFC structure ( p > 0.05). The correlations between variables are presented in Table 3.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for all study variables.

Table 2. T-tests for victimization, AUC ground, CAR, slope, and vlPFC surface area, thickness, and volume by sex.

Table 3. Pearson correlations of predictor and outcome variables.

Moderating Role of CAR

No significant relationships were found pertaining to vlPFC surface area, thickness, or volume (all p's > 0.02727).

Moderating Role of Diurnal Slope

No significant relationships (main effects or interactions) were found pertaining to vlPFC surface area, volume, or thickness (all p's > 0.02727). The second order interaction (Victimization × Diurnal slope × Sex) was found to predict right hemisphere vlPFC surface area (β = 1.321, SE = 0.568, p = 0.027). This result remained significant when also controlling for intracranial volume (ICV) at an uncorrected alpha level (β = 0.365, SE = 0.176, p = 0.038). Regression analyses performed for boys and girls separately for the significant interaction revealed that the interaction between victimization and diurnal slope predicted right hemisphere vlPFC area for boys (β = −0.957, SE = 0.326, p = 0.003), but not girls ( p > 0.6).

Simple Slopes Analysis

To examine the nature of the interaction effect for boys of peer victimization and diurnal slope on right hemisphere vlPFC area, the relationship between peer victimization and vlPFC area was determined for boys scoring low (1 SD below the mean) and high (1 SD above the mean) on diurnal slope (see Figure 1). The simple slope was negative for boys with steeper diurnal slope [ gradient = −85.57, t(24) = −2.069, p = 0.052], and positive for boys with flatter diurnal slope [ gradient = 87.46, t(24) = 1.834, p = 0.082].

Figure 1. Right vlPFC surface area in relation to victimization for flatter (-1 SD) and steeper (+1 SD) diurnal slope in boys. The slope was negative for boys with steeper diurnal slope [gradient = -85.57, t(24) = -2.069, p = 0.052] and positive for boys with flatter diurnal slope [gradient = 87.46, t(24) = 1.834, p = 0.082].

Moderating Role of AUCground

No significant relationships were found pertaining to bilateral vlPFC volume or thickness. The second order interaction (Victimization × AUC ground × Sex) was found to predict right hemisphere surface area (β = −0.406, SE = 0.165, p = 0.019). This result remained significant when also controlling for intracranial volume (ICV) at an uncorrected alpha level (β = −0.111, SE = 0.052, p = 0.032). Regression analyses performed for boys and girls separately for the significant interaction revealed that the interaction between victimization and AUC ground predicted right hemisphere vlPFC area for boys (β = 0.367, SE = 0.154, p = 0.025), but not girls ( p > 0.5).

Simple Slopes Analysis

To examine the nature of the interaction effect for boys of peer victimization and AUC ground on right hemisphere vlPFC area, the relationship between peer victimization and vlPFC area was determined for boys scoring low (1 SD below the mean) and high (1 SD above the mean) on AUC (see Figure 2). The simple slope was negative for boys with low AUC ground [ gradiant = −127.14, t(24) = −1.774, p = 0.091], and non-significant for boys with high AUC ground ( p = 0.167).

Figure 2. Right vlPFC thickness and surface area in relation to victimization for low (-1 SD) and high (+1 SD) AUCground in boys. The slope was negative for boys with low AUCground [gradient = -127.14, t(24) = -1.774, p = 0.091] and positive for boys with high AUCground ( p = 0.167).

Discussion

This study addressed the relationship between childhood peer victimization, cortisol, and adolescent vlPFC structure. To our knowledge, this is the first study assessing the effect of HPA-axis function on the relationship between victimization and adolescent brain structure. Consistent with expectations, we found that cortisol moderated the relationship between childhood victimization and adolescent vlPFC structure in a sex-dependent manner. Specifically, we showed that high childhood victimization in boys with high versus low cortisol levels was differentially related to vlPFC structure in adolescent boys.

Although not the primary aim of the study, we also tested for direct associations between victimization and cortisol measures. There were no significant associations. Earlier studies examining the relationship between victimization and cortisol have often found flatter CAR, lower overall cortisol secretion, and lower cortisol reactivity in victimized children ( Knack et al., 2011; Ouellet-Morin et al., 2011). However, several studies fail to report a relationship between concurrent cortisol and victimization ( Peters et al., 2011; Vaillancourt et al., 2011). These inconsistencies may be due to differences in methodologies used, but also point to the fact that victimized individuals may differ in their HPA-axis function.

We found that, for boys, self-reported victimization was differentially related to vlPFC structure depending on cortisol levels. The higher boys scored on childhood peer victimization and the higher their AUC ground, the larger their right hemisphere vlPFC surface area was as an adolescent. A different influence of cortisol on the relationship between victimization and vlPFC structure was observed when considering the diurnal slope. Boys who scored higher on victimization and who had flatter diurnal slope had a larger right hemisphere vlPFC surface area as adolescents. These results are consistent with our hypothesis that cortisol moderates the relationship between victimization and brain structure. This finding may indicate a biological sensitivity to stress that could influence structural brain development.

Although our moderation effects were consistent with hypotheses, the directions of associations were not. We hypothesized that victimization would be associated with smaller vlPFC in adolescents with higher cortisol output. Instead, we found that victimization was associated with smaller vlPFC area in individuals with lower AUC and steeper slope. While we did not assess structural changes in the brain over time, the smaller vlPFC surface area in victimized children with lower daily cortisol output may indicate normal or precocious adolescent brain development. In normally developing children, surface area initially shows expansion until the age of about 12.7 years, after which steady reductions are observed ( Schnack et al., 2014). Moreover, right hemisphere surface area decreases at a faster rate than the left ( Schnack et al., 2014). Reductions in surface area may indicate increased specificity, increased neuronal efficiency, and temporal precision ( Lewis, 1997; Rutherford et al., 1998; Bullmore and Sporns, 2010). Prefrontal cortex activity in particular becomes more focal during adolescence ( Vijayakumar et al., 2014) and increased cortical thinning and reduced surface area has been associated with higher cognitive ability in mid-adolescence ( Tamnes et al., 2013; Schnack et al., 2014). Conversely, less cortical surface area reduction in adolescence has been associated with conduct disorder symptoms ( Sarkar et al., 2015). Given the support for cortical surface area reduction in adolescence as part of normal development, it is plausible that high cortisol represents an adaptive response to a stressor, which may be protective.

The length of time that a stressor has been present can impact diurnal cortisol levels ( Miller et al., 2007). It has been suggested that stressors that have been present for a short time are linked to having elevated cortisol, whereas long-term stress has been associated with flattened cortisol slopes ( Fries et al., 2005). It is possible that children who have only been bullied for a short while are still more biologically reactive to stress compared to children who have been bullied over a longer period of time ( Knack et al., 2011). While higher cortisol levels may indicate a flexible stress response that is able to cope with a current stressor, it does indicate that the organism is experiencing stress. As such, we cannot exclude the possibility that this may lead to deleterious outcomes through a mechanism not assessed here. For example, high cortisol has been associated with a range of negative outcomes including depression, diabetes mellitus, and chronic immune disorders ( McEwan, 1998). These findings echo Miller et al. (2007) by suggesting that the consequences of an up- or down-regulated stress system depend largely on characteristics of the stressor and the organism. This emphasizes the need for adequate characterization of the stressor and for taking potential confounders into account.

As our findings indicated significant sex differences, it is important to consider them in the light of earlier findings relating to sex differences. While sex differences in cortical development across adolescence are unclear, females' cortical volume and surface area has been found to "peak" earlier than males' ( Raznahan et al., 2010). Wierenga et al. (2014) found similar effects for volume and thickness development within some prefrontal regions. It is possible that the sex differences observed in our study relate to pubertal changes. Future studies should take into account pubertal status and measures of gonadal hormones and their complex interplay with HPA-axis activity ( Simmons et al., 2015).

This study has some limitations. Victimization is only one aspect of children's experiences and does not exist in isolation. Future studies should consider other factors that may increase vulnerability to or confer protection against the impact of peer victimization. Given that measures were not repeated across development, it is not possible to infer how victimization might influence HPA-axis function and brain development over time. Future studies would do well to assess vlPFC structure at several time points so as to assess the trajectory of brain development, and also perform a whole-brain analysis to investigate possible effects on other brain regions. With a relatively small sample size ( n = 50, 24 boys), these results should be generalized with caution and be replicated with a larger sample. Also due to the small sample, we were unable to consider various subtypes of bullying. This may be problematic as different types of victimization have been associated with distinct behavioral outcomes ( Vaillancourt et al., 2008). Despite the relatively small number of participants, the study was conducted with a population-based sample, which supports the external validity of our findings. The rate of victimization found in our sample was similar to that of earlier studies ( Vaillancourt et al., 2011), though it should be noted that our sample contained few children who considered themselves to be highly victimized. This could indicate that the Olweus Bully/Victim scale may not be sensitive enough to capture the full extent of victimization in our sample. The questionnaire asked children to report on their victimization experiences in the past year and children may not have been able to report this accurately. This would have had direct implications for the validity of our cortisol measures given that the relationship between stress and cortisol levels changes over time ( Miller et al., 2007). Future studies should not only take the frequency of victimization into account, but should also assess the time of victimization onset.

Finally, while cortisol provides helpful insights into biological stress it only represents one aspect of experienced stress. As such, a subjective measure of stress would have been helpful to provide insights into the effect of victimization on the developing brain. Recently it was shown, for example, that peer victimization is related to greater pro-inflammatory cytokine responses to an acute social stressor in adolescents ( Giletta et al., 2018). Future studies should combine both subjective and biological measures of stress and assess these in relation to victimization and brain structure. In addition, diurnal cortisol represents only one aspect of the biological stress response and does not take into account how children may respond when faced with a stressor. Future studies should consider cortisol reactivity to a stressor (victimization or a simulation thereof) to elucidate the relationships between negative peer experiences and biological measures of stress.

Conclusion

Our study showed that cortisol levels in childhood have a differential effect on the relationship between childhood peer victimization and adolescent vlPFC structure, but only for boys. These findings shed some light on the complex association of cortisol with stress. It is possible that, for boys who are more biologically sensitive to stress (as evidenced by high cortisol), the experience of victimization could have deleterious consequences for brain development. However, questions remain regarding what is desirable in terms of prefrontal brain development during early adolescence. The question of whether low or high cortisol is adaptive in terms of structural brain development should be studied using longitudinal designs assessing stress and brain structure at multiple time points.

Author Contributions

BG, SS, and AC contributed to the conception or design of the work and the acquisition of data. MdP and SW contributed to the analysis of the data. MdP, SW, and BG contributed to the interpretation of the data. MdP drafted the work. All authors revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content and provided approval for publication of the content.

Funding

This research was funded by a NWO Veni grant (451-10-021) awarded to BG and a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Career Development Award (1007716) to SW.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

The reviewer AT and handling Editor declared their shared affiliation.

Footnotes

References

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Bullying the Brain? Longitudinal Links Between Childhood Peer Victimization, Cortisol, and Adolescent Brain Structure

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BackgroundChildhood peer victimization is a stressful life experience associated with long-lasting adverse psychological consequences. While there is some evidence that victimization is associated with alterations in brain function, little is known about effects on brain structure.

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In the article "Instagram Unveils a Bully Filter by Laura M. Holson explains how they made a filter to weed out comments that are meant to harass/bully a person. “Protecting our youngest community members is crucial to helping them feel comfortable to express who they are and what they care about,” he added. Bullying has become such a crucial matter because of the affects it has on the adolescent brain.

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Instagram, owned by Facebook, is expanding its anti-bullying initiative in an effort to rid the popular social media site of bullies. Credit Credit Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse

Instagram said Tuesday it was expanding its online anti-bullying initiative, adding a new filter to weed out comments meant to harass or bully the 800 million users of the popular social media site.

The company said it would review accounts that have a large number of comments filtered out. If those accounts violate Instagram's community guidelines, it will take action, which could include banning them. The new filter will also hide comments attacking a person's appearance or character, and alert Instagram to repeat offenders.

It is the second step in an initiative announced last year to curb offensive comments and rid Instagram of its most malicious members.

"To be clear, we don't tolerate bullying on Instagram," Kevin Systrom, the company's chief executive and co-founder, told Instagram users in a blog post Tuesday. The company will also expand policies to guard against the bullying of young public figures who are often the target of hate-filled messages.

"Protecting our youngest community members is crucial to helping them feel comfortable to express who they are and what they care about," he added.

In a 2017 study conducted by Ditch the Label, an online anti-bullying organization, 71 percent of respondents in the United Kingdom said social media sites did not do enough to combat online bullying. Instagram was of particular note: 42 percent of more than 10,000 people aged 12 to 20 surveyed in the United Kingdom said they had experienced cyberbullying on the site in the previous 12 months.

In March, the model and actress Amber Rose called out cyberbullies for saying her 5-year-old son was gay after she posted videos on Instagram of him opening a gift from the singer Taylor Swift.

It is not only children who are targeted. In November, Drew Barrymore was attacked after she posed with a starfish in a photograph to promote a new lipstick. "It hurt me," she wrote in a follow-up post, which was liked 484,238 times.

Instagram, like other social media sites including Twitter and YouTube, has become an easy place to shame or offend, something the company acknowledged last year. Mr. Systrom addressed it in a blog post then, saying, "Many of you have told us that toxic comments discourage you from enjoying Instagram and expressing yourself freely."

Instagram is using a machine-learning algorithm to detect offenders. Called DeepText, it was built by Facebook, which owns Instagram, and uses artificial intelligence to review words for context and meaning, much as the human brain determines how words are used. (Facebook is holding its annual F8 developer conference this week.) Initially, Instagram had a team of people review and rate comments, sorting them into different categories: bullying, racism or sexual harassment.

"What we are concentrating on is building the tools so people can control their experience on Instagram," said Karina Newton, head for public policy at Instagram. "Those will improve over time."

Instagram's users are expected to follow the site's guidelines, which include being respectful to other community members and not posting photographs of naked bodies.

The company has also embarked on a "kindness" campaign, hosting events to promote inclusion and diversity. "It's been our goal to make it a safe place for self expression and to foster kindness within the community," Mr. Systrom said. "This update is just the next step in our mission to deliver on that promise."

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Instagram said Tuesday it was expanding its online anti-bullying initiative, adding a new filter to weed out comments meant to harass or bully the 800 million users of the popular social media site. The company said it would review accounts that have a large number of comments filtered out.

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David Eagleman the author of The Brain described Sigmund Freud’s theory that our brain and our thought are affected by many things, “We don’t typically know the roots of our own choices. Our brains constantly pull information from the environment and use it to steer our behavior.” This ideology lends to the theory that bully does affect our brain.

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This is a very subjective question. Meaning it always depends on who you're asking. Because none of this has yet to be "proven" people will argue forThis is a very subjective question. Meaning it always depends on who you're asking. Because none of this has yet to be "proven" people will argue for whoever's research and theories they agree with. I can give you some of my own personal (and I try really hard to be objective and steer clear of opinions, but that will always have a role so that's just my warning label of sorts, ha) but because this is such a big topic today it'd help if you were more specific... do you mean subconscious mind just basically like how we make decisions, fears, etc or do you want to go deeper meaning the abnormal subconscious mind and/or subconscious mind of trauma, etc. there are so many good out there. If you want recs let me know, but another good way to find is to do a bit of research online and/or going to a book store and looking at several books that deal with your specific questions... I hope this helps! ...more (less)

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This is a very subjective question. Meaning it always depends on who you're asking. Because none of this has yet to be "proven" people will argue forThis is a very subjective question. Meaning it always depends on who you're asking. Because none of this has yet to be "proven" people will argue for whoever's research and theories they agree with.