Hippocampus long‐axis specialization throughout development: A meta‐analysis

Abstract

The human adult hippocampus can be subdivided into the head, or anterior hippocampus and its body and tail, or posterior hippocampus, and a wealth of functional differences along the longitudinal axis have been reported. One line of literature emphasizes specialization for different aspects of cognition, whereas another emphasizes the unique role of the anterior hippocampus in emotional processing. While some research suggests that functional differences in memory between the anterior and posterior hippocampus appear early in development, it remains unclear whether this is also the case for functional differences in emotion processing. The goal of this meta‐analysis was to determine whether the long‐axis functional specialization observed in adults is present earlier in development. Using a quantitative meta‐analysis, long‐axis functional specialization was assessed using the data from 26 functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, which included 39 contrasts and 804 participants ranging in age from 4 to 21 years. Results indicated that emotion was more strongly localized to the anterior hippocampus, with memory being more strongly localized to the posterior hippocampus, demonstrating long‐axis specialization with regard to memory and emotion in children similar to that seen in adults. An additional analysis of laterality indicated that while memory was left dominant, emotion was processed bilaterally.

Revealing complexity: Segmentation of hippocampal subfields in adolescents with major depressive disorder reveals specific links to cognitive dysfunctions

“…Future longitudinal studies are warranted to reveal to which extent hippocampal subregions could predict the onset and development of MDD. Secondly, despite of the high-resolution images and robust segment method, we only focused on the substructure volumes and ignored the longaxis specialization of the hippocampus [76,77]. Noval shape analyses may provide more morphometric and quantitative brain measures and greater power to detect disease effects [78,79].…”

Amygdala and hippocampal activation in emotional imagery

“…In addition, including sagittal views in graphical results would improve the assessment of the spatial localization of reported effects. Recent findings that the anterior hippocampus is consistently modulated by emotion [22][23][24] suggest that a broader focus encompassing activation of other neural regions modulated by emotion across various induction contexts could facilitate our understanding of the neural networks underlying emotional experience and expression.…”