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"The science shows that childhood maltreatment may produce changes in both brain function and structure," says Martin Teicher, MD, PhD, director of the Developmental Biopsychiatry Research Program at McLean, and author of the paper. Although a baby is born with almost all the brain cells (neurons) he will ever have, the brain continues to develop actively throughout childhood and adolescence. "A child's interactions with the outside environment causes connections to form between brain cells," Teicher explains. "Then these connections are pruned during puberty and adulthood. So whatever a child experiences, for good or bad, helps determine how his brain is wired."
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