Warning for parents! Sexual touch during childhood changes the brain drastically

If you have been touched in a wrong way sexually during your childhood or early youth the chances are that your brain could be severely altered, warns a new study.

Researchers in Germany found that young girls hit puberty earlier if they were touched sexually than those who were not, according to a report by the Daily Mail.

The study is aimed to identify if hormones or sexual experience trigger the beginning of puberty.

Researchers were surprised to find that sexual touch may have a bigger role to play on puberty whereas they had expected sexual hormones to accelerate puberty and for the 'genital cortex' to grow. 

Researchers say it is also a warning of inappropriate sexual contact's drastic impact on the brain.

The researchers carried out experiments on female mice which were touched on their genitals. The touch not only caused changes in their brains but also accelerated puberty.

"Sexual touch is strictly regulated in most human cultures and this is particularly true during development," Professor Michael Brecht, of Humboldt University told the Daily Mail.

"It has also become painfully clear that sexual abuse and inappropriate sexual contact during development have long-lasting detrimental consequences," he goes on to explain. Adding, “Remarkably, structural brain imaging in humans with a history of sexual abuse identified a thinning of putative human genital cortex, as a cortical consequence of childhood sexual abuse."

Prof Brecht explained the study's findings ‘help to understand why the perception of our body changes so much during puberty.’

The study was originally published in the journal PLOS Biology.