Potentially Excitotoxic Levels of Episodic Memory Function in the Medial Temporal Lobe of Trauma-Exposed Children

Non-human findings indicate the hippocampus is highly sensitive to the damaging effects of stress, but little research has addressed effects of early life stress on human hippocampal function. Here we investigated the effects of trauma exposure on fMRI activation in a hippocampus-dependent episodic memory encoding task, in school-age children at risk for high levels of inner-city violence.