Back to glossary
Cognition & social

Hippocampal volume

DEHippocampusvolumen

Reviewed by

Hippocampal volume measures the size of the brain region central to memory consolidation and spatial navigation. Atrophy rates vary by cohort and method: meta-analyses report roughly 0.5–1.4 percent per year in cognitively normal controls, accelerating to about 3.5–4 percent per year in Alzheimer's disease. MRI-derived volume serves as an early biomarker of cognitive aging. Aerobic exercise has been shown to preserve or even enlarge it (Erickson et al. 2011, PNAS), while separate lines of evidence link sleep quality and chronic stress to hippocampal structure.

Sources

  1. Raz N, Lindenberger U, Rodrigue KM, Kennedy KM, Head D, Williamson A, Dahle C, Gerstorf D, Acker JD. (2005). Regional brain changes in aging healthy adults: general trends, individual differences and modifiers. *Cerebral Cortex*doi:10.1093/cercor/bhi044
  2. Erickson KI, Voss MW, Prakash RS, Basak C, Szabo A, Chaddock L, Kim JS, Heo S, Alves H, White SM, Wojcicki TR, Mailey E, Vieira VJ, Martin SA, Pence BD, Woods JA, McAuley E, Kramer AF. (2011). Exercise training increases size of hippocampus and improves memory. *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences*doi:10.1073/pnas.1015950108