Childhood trauma affects brain pathways linked to adult anhedonia

US: Childhood Trauma Affects Brain Pathways Linked to “Adult Anhedonia”! (21.8.2026)

Experiencing trauma in childhood can lead to a lack of motivation and less pleasure from rewards-or anhedonia-later in life. In humans, childhood trauma is linked to changes in the activity of reward-related brain pathways stemming from an area called the hippocampus. Preclinical work in animals suggests that hippocampal changes may contribute to anhedonia. But do hippocampal changes linked to childhood trauma make people more vulnerable to developing anhedonia? New in JNeurosci, a research team led by Kathleen O’Brien at Temple University and Vishnu Murty at the University of Oregon sought to answer this question.

Lobes of the Human Brain!

China: Scientists Map Neural Network of Hippocampus in Mouse Brain! (5.2.2024)

“Such previously unknown spatial organization principles of single neuron projections will provide a structural basis for a better understanding the function of hippocampal neurons,” said Xu Chun, a leading researcher on the team and a correspondent author of the paper.

“This enormous dataset (in the paper) provides unprecedented insights into the divergence of hippocampal output, bilateral projections and some of the principles of hippocampal projections at the level of individual neurons,” said one peer review.

Poo said the research results will provide a foundation to work out a function map of the single neurons in the mouse hippocampus to discover how signals are transmitted and which single neurons and signals are related to particular brain functions, such as memory, learning and emotions.