Professor Carsten Finke | The hippocampus in neurological disease - a clinical neuroscience perspective

https://eu02web.zoom-x.de/j/64757342818

The hippocampus is a key structure for human cognition and central to long-term memory and spatial navigation, yet also remarkably vulnerable in neurological disease. This makes the hippocampus a particularly informative model for linking clinically relevant cognitive dysfunction to fundamental questions about memory systems and brain organization.

Focusing on autoimmune encephalitides, I will show how these disorders provide a unique framework for studying persistent hippocampal dysfunction. Recent studies characterise their cognitive impairment patterns, improve our understanding of long-term outcomes, and offer insight into underlying pathophysiological mechanisms. At the same time, they provide valuable human lesion models for investigating how hippocampal damage affects memory systems in the human brain. Importantly, the structural and functional consequences in these disorders are not confined to the hippocampus itself, but are accompanied by large-scale network reorganization and altered brain dynamics, illustrating how focal pathology can reshape distributed cognitive networks.

I will further discuss evidence that hippocampal injury reveals not only vulnerability, but also the capacity of human memory systems for reorganization and compensation. These studies link lesion-based approaches with a broader range of experimental paradigms for the assessment of long-term memory and spatial navigation, including translational work using immersive virtual reality. Finally, I will highlight the role of advanced MRI in elucidating damage mechanisms even in the absence of abnormalities on routine MRI, allowing a more precise understanding of hippocampal pathology and associated systems-level brain changes.