Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Hippocampus Structural Alterations in Post- traumatic Stress Disorder: a Brief Review

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a disabling condition that may affect individuals who have been exposed to severe emotional or physically life-threatening traumatic events. The majority of neuroimaging studies of post-traumatic stress disorder have focused on potential abnormalities in the hippocampus, a brain area that plays a critical role in memory processing and biological response to stress. Most of the imaging studies have found smaller volume of the hippocampus as measured with magnetic resonance imaging in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder while others failed to reveal hippocampal volume loss. We reviewed magnetic resonance imaging researches which focused on the hippocampal structural alteration of post-traumatic stress disorder in different populations (adults and children), with different research design (cross-sectional and longitudinal), and using different volume measure protocols (hippocampal total volume and subfield volume).