It’s Brain Awareness Week: Do YOU Know Where Your Hippocampus Is?

“If there’s a Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Secretary’s Day, and
Grandparent’s Day…. why isn’t there a KID’s DAY?”
asked a very serious young Miss Deaux,
concerned she was missing out
on her share of pressies.

“Because EVERYDAY is Kid’s Day!”
replied Momma Deaux, looking a bit annoyed.

That’s sort of how I feel about Brain Awareness Week….. EVERYDAY is Brain Awareness Day, here on MindTweaks. Well, at least every day that I crawl out of bed and manage to churn out a vaguely on topic post, that is.

Still… Every year since 1996, the The Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives (which is basically a bunch of really, really smart brain experts promoting knowledge about advances in neuroscience) has sponsored Brain Awareness Week.

And every year since 2007, I’ve planned on celebrating Brain Awareness Week in a big way. And yet, somehow, those plans have never materialized, and it’s been reduced to a mere mention and a link or two.

But not this year! MindTweaks WILL celebrate BAW2009, dangnabbit! Things may not go exactly according to plan (Ok, they certainly won’t go according to plan, since I’ve already missed a whole DAY of celebrating) but I will indeed mark Brain Awareness Week with a few special (if not spectacular) brain-specific posts. I’ll be linking to a number of other Mind/Brain bloggers, pointing out some nifty products, and maybe even making little improvements in own brain fitness, and reporting on it.

Before I can get onto all that, first, I have to justify the title of this post by pointing out the location of the hippocampus. It’s that curly bit that I colored green in the illustration on the right. (Green in honor of St. Patrick’s day, of course!)

As for why it’s called the hippocampus, and not the elephantcampus, or rhinocampus? Well…

Apparently one of the learned medical men responsible for naming such things back in the day thought that it resembled a seahorse, curled up in the brain. And the Latin for seahorse is…. you guessed it!

Hippocampus.

So what exactly does the hippocampus do, besides curling around inside the brain?

For one thing, it’s involved in forming new memories - if yours becomes damaged, you will probably be able to remember established memories, like from your childhood, but what you had for breakfast this morning may be a mystery to you. This part of the brain also seems to help provide context for new experiences, link different but related experiences together, and somehow ties emotional connections into all of that as well.

The hippocampus seems to be connected to some forms of mental illness, and seems to actually shrink in cases of severe depression and schizophrenia. It’s also the first part of the brain normally affected by Alzheimer’s, which is why in early stages of the disease, Alzheimer’s patients begin to forget day-to-day experiences, but may be able to recall their 5th birthday party with excruciatingly clear details.

But on the plus side, the hippocampus is one areaa of the brain where we *know* new cells can be created.. and there is evidence that damage and shrinkage can be reversed. There have also been experiments with a prosthethic hippocampus… How cool is that?

So. That’s the hippocampus, the seahorse of new memories, curled up deep inside your brain And since it’s St. Patricks day, and many of you may be indulging in an overabundance of green beer, keep in mind that the memory loss associated with heavy drinking? Yepp, you guessed it… alcohol impairs and potentially even damages the hippocampus.

Happy Brain Awareness Week!