Every child grows at their own pace, and the pediatrician tracks this path using growth and weight curves. A similar logic now applies to the brain as well: scientists compare the volume of its tissues with age norms and find out how developmental features relate to what the child has experienced.
On 22 October 2026, in the journal Communications Biology a paper by Johannes Julius Mohn's team was published. The researchers examined magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 299 children aged three to thirteen. In 123 of them, abuse or neglect of their basic needs had been clinically confirmed. On average, such children ranked lower on age scales of brain tissue volume.
The basis for comparison is the so-called brain charts, built from the largest available neuroimaging database. These are the first normative brain charts of their kind, covering the entire human lifespan. Before them, neuroimaging had no reference standards that would allow individual differences to be tracked over time, whereas such curves have long been familiar for height and weight. The idea is the same as with a pediatric curve, except that instead of height, the volume of gray and white matter is measured.
Position on such a scale is expressed as a percentile. For example, the 30th percentile means that approximately 30 percent of the values in the comparison group lie below this indicator. The number itself says little without the rest: about the child's health, their skills, relationships, and daily life.
Imagine a children's choir. Each note has a frequency, that is, a number of vibrations per second, which sets the pitch of the sound. And a note's place in the order by pitch is already similar to a percentile: it shows where it stands relative to the others. But neither one nor the other says anything about the beauty of the voice or about what song the child will be able to sing. A percentile records a position among peers, not quality or potential.
In the study, lower percentiles coincided with lower scores on intelligence tests and a greater number of behavioral difficulties. But the association between the severity of the abuse experienced and the brain measures ceased to be statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons. This is an important caveat: the study describes associations but does not explain their causes and does not predict further development.
The picture is not yet clear-cut. A large mega-analysis of 3711 people, published in 2026 in the journal Biological Psychiatry, found no significant effects in children and adolescents under 18 years of age: noticeable differences appeared in young adults and most strongly in young women. Another line of research followed 795 participants from age six to twenty-one and showed that a high level of childhood abuse is associated with persistently reduced volume of the right hippocampus throughout adolescence.
This is precisely where room appears for a careful, positive perspective. An adult can simultaneously see the child's difficulties and their strengths: how they reach out for contact, what fascinates them, how they try something new and return to a task after a failure. Such a perspective suggests a practical question: "What will support this child right now and help them unlock their possibilities?"
A positive focus does not mean that pain should be avoided. It is important to acknowledge what has been experienced and at the same time to notice the supports. In practice this looks simple: listen calmly, name the feelings, note a specific effort, offer a feasible choice, share the joy of a small discovery.
A position on a scale records a single moment of examination. A personal developmental trajectory can only be understood through repeated observations. A single snapshot does not answer the questions of which abilities the child will master and which relationships will support them going forward.
The next step for science is to find out how the identified features change over time and what role a safe environment, reliable relationships, and timely help play. The possibilities for recovery deserve no less attention than the consequences of difficult experience.
The practical meaning of such a perspective is to see the child as a whole: to notice where they are struggling and need professional help, and where interest, trust, and confidence are already emerging. Scientific data help formulate questions more precisely, and attentive relationships give those questions a living continuation.
The past is part of the child's story, but not its finale. New people, new supports, and new opportunities can appear alongside it. Its melody continues to sound, and the story is only being written.
