Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Department

Neuroscience

Reader 1

Dr. Dara Ghahremani

Reader 2

Dr. Sarah Marzen

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Abstract

The hippocampus plays a crucial role in memory formation and is known to decrease in volume with age, contributing to declines in memory performance. This study investigates the relationship between hippocampal subregion volumes and memory recall in aging populations using MRI and paired associate task data from the HCP-Aging dataset (n = 685). We employed the hippocampal segmentation tool FreeSurfer to analyze how volume changes in specific hippocampal subregions affect memory performance, while accounting for age, sex, and total intracranial volume. Results reveal significant age-by-recall interactions in all hippocampal subregions (p<.05). Results show a significant main effect of hippocampal tail volume on recall accuracy in the right hippocampus, with a marginally significant effect in the left hippocampus (right: p = .011, left: p = .065). But, there was not a significant interaction between the anterior (head) and posterior (tail) hippocampal volumes (right: p=.996, left: p=1.000) on recall accuracy. These findings enhance our understanding of the differential impact of hippocampal subregions on memory in aging and underscore the importance of considering subregional volume changes in memory research.

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