Gaza: Rebuilding Brains After The Bombs

The war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023 with a surprise attack by the Hamas terrorist group, triggering a long Israeli military offensive. This violence leaves deep scars on the minds of those who lived through the conflict: constant fear, memory problems, compromised emotional control, and the risk of mental disorders. Children suffer the most, and the effects can span generations. Peace brings opportunities for healing, but it requires significant support, care, and reconstruction.

The war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip. This attack included rockets, ground incursions, and the kidnapping of civilians, resulting in many deaths.

In response, Israel declared war and launched a military offensive on Gaza, which included aerial bombardments, ground operations, and a blockade. The war dragged on for years, turning into a large-scale humanitarian crisis.

War leaves scars that cannot be seen in photographs or ruins. They remain inside the body, more precisely, inside the brain. Now that peace has finally been sealed in Gaza, another type of reconstruction begins: neurological and emotional reconstruction.

Months of bombings, fear, loss, and isolation have affected millions of developing brains. Science shows that prolonged trauma literally changes the shape and function of the human brain.

When a person lives in a constant state of fear, hearing sirens, explosions, screams, and losing family members, the brain goes into hypervigilance. The amygdala, the region that detects danger, becomes enlarged and hyperactive, reacting even to harmless sounds.

The hippocampus, responsible for memory and orientation in time and space, shrinks. This causes confusion, nightmares, and difficulty distinguishing past from present. Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex, which controls impulses and reasoning, loses connections. The person becomes more impulsive, anxious, and has difficulty making decisions or planning for the future.

These changes are typical of PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), but in war zones, the impact is more profound: the brain stops learning that the world can be safe.

On the other hand, Israeli hostages held captive for months, or even years, suffered profound brain impacts, similar to those observed in victims of torture or prolonged war.

The deprivation of freedom, the constant fear of death, and the lack of control over one's own destiny cause chronic hyperactivation of the amygdala, the area responsible for fear and alertness, and a functional reduction in the hippocampus, which processes memory and temporal orientation. This leads to memory lapses, difficulty concentrating, distorted sense of time, and episodes of dissociation (a feeling of "detachment" from reality).

Over time, prolonged exposure to extreme stress also alters the prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making and empathy, resulting in lasting symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), insomnia, nightmares, and even loss of emotional identity.

In children, trauma not only affects emotions, it disrupts brain development. Prolonged exposure to stress releases cortisol, the "stress hormone," at toxic levels. This damages neural connections, especially in areas related to language, attention, and empathy.

Many of these children will grow up with symptoms of:

• Chronic anxiety and nightmares,

• Cognitive delays and learning difficulties,

• Aggressive or withdrawn behavior,

• Difficulty trusting adults and forming attachments.

Without psychological and educational support, there is a risk of creating a generation with memories imprinted in pain, not hope.

Furthermore, hunger exacerbates all the neurological effects of war, because the brain depends on constant nutrition to function and develop. Lack of food reduces levels of glucose, iron, B vitamins, and omega-3s, all essential for neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which regulate mood and memory.

In children, malnutrition can cause brain atrophy, cognitive and emotional delays, and increased vulnerability to disorders such as anxiety, depression, and PTSD. In adults, the stress of hunger intensifies irritability, despair, and loss of emotional control, making psychological recovery after conflict much more difficult.

Modern neuroscience shows that trauma doesn't stop with the generation that experiences it. People exposed to war for long periods undergo epigenetic changes, meaning certain chemicals attach themselves to DNA and alter the way genes are expressed, without changing the genetic code itself.

These changes can be passed on to children, affecting hormonal balance and increasing vulnerability to stress and depression. This explains why children and grandchildren of survivors of wars (such as the Holocaust or Rwanda) are at higher risk of anxiety disorders and depression, even without directly experiencing the conflict. Peace, therefore, needs to last for several generations for the collective brain to heal.

But the brain is also plastic; it can regenerate. With time, safety, community support, art, education, and emotional bonds, neural connections can rebuild. The hippocampus can grow back, and the amygdala can calm down.

Group therapy programs, music, drawing, and safe learning are powerful brain restorers. Neuroscience calls this "positive reprogramming of the fear circuit," the process of teaching the brain that life can once again be predictable, good, and human. In other words, the brain learns to believe in peace.

By Lidiane Garcia