Can sexual aggression alter the female brain? New Rutgers study says yes.
Rutgers University's Passion Puddle in a 2012 file photo. NEW BRUNSWICK -- How can studying laboratory rats help us better understand the effects of sexual aggression on the female brain?
It turns out, according to one study, a lot. And the information could be critical in helping women, from a scientific standpoint, to better recover from sexual assault, according to a team of researchers at Rutgers University.
Their recently published study found that sexual aggression in rats could change how some females' brains learn, particularly when it comes to maternal behaviors they develop in their young adult years.
Despite the obvious differences between humans and laboratory rats, there are also similarities, said Tracey J. Shors, a professor at the Rutgers Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience Center and the Department of Psychology, who led the study.
"For example," she said, "they both express and experience aggression. So, the study is simply meant to establish a way to study the biology of aggression."
In the study, female rodents in puberty were paired with "sexually experienced males." When the male rat became aggressive, the female rat produced more stress hormones, which affected how much she learned about taking care of her young.
"If you put a male rat who has had sexual activity in his lifetime with a female rat who is in puberty, he will chase her around generally more aggressively," Shors said in a telephone interview.
She hatched the idea for the study some years ago after a conversation with a clinical psychologist who mostly treated women, many of whom had experienced sexual trauma when they were teenagers and young adults.
At that time, she said there was sparse research on how sexual aggression affected the female brain. Ever since, she has been on a mission to understand the subject, hoping that science could lend a hand in helping women recover from an assault.
"It is so prevalent, and yet so under the radar," she said.
She continued, "So I just started thinking more and more about that, and wondering why we weren't studying that in science laboratories. So I just decided to look into it to try and find a way to (learn how) the female brain responds to sexual aggression."
One in three women worldwide and one in five women in the U.S. will experience some form of sexual assault in their lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And Shors said they are "more likely (to) suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress disorder" and other psychological problems.
But she said the study was only a small piece in the search for solutions to ultimately help women recover from sexual violence. She hoped it would inspire other researchers to study the subject.
Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the Find NJ.com on Facebook.