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Childhood maltreatment acts as a severe stressor that produces a cascade of physiological and neurobiological changes that lead to enduring alterations in brain structure. However, structural neuroimaging findings have been inconsistent. The authors conducted a meta-analysis of published whole-brain voxel-based morphometry studies in childhood maltreatment to elucidate the most robust volumetric gray matter abnormalities relative to comparison subjects to date.

Twelve data sets were included, comprising 331 individuals (56 children/adolescents and 275 adults) with a history of childhood maltreatment and 362 comparison subjects (56 children/adolescents and 306 adults). Anisotropic effect size-signed differential mapping, a voxel-based meta-analytic method, was used to examine regions of smaller and larger gray matter volumes in maltreated individuals relative to comparison subjects …