Overview
The hippocampus is a part of the brain’s limbic system that handles the formation of long-term memories, processing of spatial information, and association of emotions to experiences.
With chronic substance use, the hippocampus stores the people, places, and things as cues associated with the high of using substances. The processes of long-term potentiation (LTP), in which the connections between neurons are strengthened as part of learning, and neurogenesis, in which new brain cells in the hippocampus are developed, are both stunted. The hippocampus is physically smaller in people who use substances constantly, which heavily impacts memory, spatial orientation, and new cell growth as part of healing or learning.