Romantic breakups really can go right to one’s head — more specifically, to one’s hippocampus.
That part of the brain, which helps control memory and regulate emotion, tends to be smaller in people who’ve both experienced childhood trauma, then lived through the end of a long-term relationship once they are older, according to a study in the European Journal of Neuroscience.
A smaller hippocampus is a hallmark of many mental disorders. Although childhood mistreatment is a known risk factor for later psychological problems, a solid link between that and hippocampus size has never been solidified.
To better understand the link between long ago trauma and more recent emotional crisis, researchers studied a group of 196 young adults. They completed surveys both about childhood trauma as well as more recent emotionally challenging experiences, including breakups. Then they performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the hippocampus size.
They found smaller hippocampus ...
