Noteboom The Law Firm

Veterans With PTSD Have Smaller Hippocampal

March 18, 2011 - The hippocampus is an area of the brain tied to a person's memory and stress. According to a recent study conducted by researchers at the San Francisco Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center and the University of California at San Francisco, those veterans suffering from chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
had a hippocampus around 6% smaller than those veterans who had recovered from PTSD .

Eighty-two Veterans of the Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991, 41 of which had recovered from PTSD and 41 of which were still suffering from PTSD served as the study's subjects. Researchers measured the brain volumes of the veterans using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The results from the testing lead the researchers to 2 possible interpretations. First, the hippocampus shrinks in people suffering from PTSD and resumes to normal size once the person recovers. Alternatively, those people with naturally smaller hippocampal volumes have less of an ability to recover from PTSD once they suffer from it.

Researchers do know from studies on animals that hippocampal volume can change when those animals are exposed to stress. When the stress is removed, hippocampal volume returns to normal levels. This gives researchers hope the damage PTSD causes can be reversed.