#4123. When Fear Shrinks the Brain: A Computational Model of the Effects of Posttraumatic Stress on Hippocampal Volume

September 2026publication date
Proposal available till 24-05-2025
4 total number of authors per manuscript0 $

The title of the journal is available only for the authors who have already paid for
Journal’s subject area:
Linguistics and Language;
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology;
Human-Computer Interaction;
Cognitive Neuroscience;
Artificial Intelligence;
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More details about the manuscript: Science Citation Index Expanded or/and Social Sciences Citation Index
Abstract:
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disorder often characterized by the unwanted re-experiencing of a traumatic event through nightmares, flashbacks, and/or intrusive memories. This paper presents a neurocomputational model using the ACT-R cognitive architecture that simulates intrusive memory retrieval following a potentially traumatic event (PTE) and predicts hippocampal volume changes observed in PTSD. It is hypothesized that (1) increasing the intensity I of a PTE will increase the odds of memory intrusions, and (2) increased frequency of intrusions will result in a concurrent decrease in hippocampal size. The model also found that I was a significant predictor of hippocampal volume reduction, where the mean and range of simulated volume loss match results of existing meta-analyses. The authors believe that this is the first model to both describe traumatic memory retrieval and provide a mechanistic account of changes in hippocampal volume, capturing one plausible link between PTSD and hippocampal volume.
Keywords:
ACT-R; Amygdala; Cognitive Architecture; Declarative Memory; Hippocampus; Long-Term Memory; Post-traumatic Stress Disorder

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