Episodic memory after trauma exposure: Medial temporal lobe function is positively related to re-experiencing and inversely related to negative affect symptoms

Hippocampal structure is particularly sensitive to trauma and other stressors. However, previous findings linking hippocampal function with trauma-related psychopathology have been mixed. Heterogeneity in psychological responses to trauma has not been considered with respect to hippocampal function and may contribute to mixed findings. To address these issues, we examined associations between data-driven symptom dimensions and episodic memory formation, a key function of the hippocampus, in a trauma-exposed sample. Symptom dimensions were defined using principal components analysis (PCA) in 3881 trauma-exposed African-American women recruited from primary care waiting rooms of a large urban hospital. Hippocampal and amygdala function were subsequently investigated in an fMRI study of episodic memory formation in a subset of 54 women. Participants viewed scenes with neutral, negative, and positive content during fMRI, and completed a delayed cued recall task. PCA analysis produced five symptom dimensions interpreted as reflecting negative affect, somatic symptoms, re-experiencing, hyper-arousal, and numbing. Re-experiencing was the only symptom type associated with hippocampal function, predicting increased memory encoding-related activation in the hippocampus as well as the amygdala. In contrast, the negative affect component predicted lower amygdala activation for subsequently recalled scenes, and lower functional coupling with other important memory-related regions including the precuneus, inferior frontal gyrus, and occipital cortex. Symptom dimensions were not related to hippocampal volume. The fMRI findings for re-experiencing versus negative affect parallel differences in behavioral memory phenomena in PTSD versus MDD, and highlight a need for more complex models of trauma-related pathology.