Healthy Hippocampus
Life,  Mental Health

Having A Healthy Hippocampus Can Positively Impact Emotional Regulation

July 3, 2023 /

Healthy Hippocampus

What Is The Hippocampus? 

The hippocampus is a small, curved formation located deep in the brain’s temporal lobe. It plays a vital role in learning, emotion regulation, and forming new memories. 

The hippocampus is a plastic and vulnerable structure that gets damaged by adverse stimuli. When a child lives in a stressful environment, external stimuli such as abuse, mental abuse, emotional abuse, and detached emotional parenting all contribute to trauma in the child. When the child goes through constant stress, it hampers their brain development, thus harming their hippocampus. 

The hippocampus plays a role in emotional processing, including anxiety and avoidance behaviors. 

The Development Of The Hippocampus

Neurotransmitters like glutamate, GABA, dopamine, and serotonin promote healthy memory formation and spatial learning in the hippocampus. Furthermore, these neurotransmitters help form synapse connections, which help nurture healthy dendrites and build healthy neural pathways (of learning and memories) in the hippocampus. 

Trauma And The Hippocampus

The hippocampus will affect the ability to recall some memories for trauma survivors. Other memories may be extremely vivid and constantly on the mind of people who have experienced trauma. Therefore, environments that remind the survivor of their trauma in even small ways can cause fear, stress, and panic.

The brain area affected by trauma includes the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. In addition, traumatic stress can be associated with lasting changes in these brain areas. 

Ongoing stress and chronic PTSD may ultimately damage the hippocampus, making it smaller. 

Emotion Regulation And The Hippocampus 

The hippocampus plays a role in the brain’s social cognition and emotional processing. Emotion regulation is a person’s ability to manage and respond to an emotional experience effectively. In addition, emotional regulation is vital because it is the time between feeling the emotion and your reaction to that emotion and, for example, pausing to collect your thoughts before you respond. 

In conclusion, for children to become healthy adults who can manage their emotions, overcome learning disabilities, and have healthy spatial cognition – parents need to nurture interactions and affection toward their children to help in their brain development to help them develop a healthy hippocampus. 

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