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Association Between Anterior Hippocampal Gyrification and Episodic Memory Performance in Neurotypical Young Adults

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Nima Talaei Kamalabadi¹ (), Jordan DeKraker², Bradley Karat¹, Ali Khan¹, Stefan Köhler¹; ¹University of Western Ontario, ²McGill University

The hippocampus is critical for episodic memory. The relationship between its structural variability and individual differences in episodic memory performance among neurotypical young adults, however, remains unclear. Previous studies have not consistently found associations between hippocampal volume and episodic memory or other aspects of hippocampally-dependent behavioural performance in this population. Here, we moved beyond traditional volumetric approaches and tested whether more fine-grained morphometric features, particularly gyrification, are related to behavioural performance on hippocampal-dependent tasks in neurotypical young adults. To obtain measures of these features, we used HippUnfold, a deep learning-based segmentation tool to model the hippocampus as a folded cortical ribbon, which is of particular importance for capturing variability in folding patterns in the hippocampal head. We focused on a large-scale public dataset that includes high-resolution T2-weighted MRI scans and behavioral measures on multiple hippocampal-dependent tasks, including episodic memory as measured by the Autobiographical Interview. Volumetric and surface-based morphometric measures were obtained in 93 participants (55 female). The surface-based analysis of hippocampal gyrification revealed two significant clusters in the right anterior hippocampus: one positively and the other negatively correlated with the episodic detail scores. The ratio of gyrification values between these clusters was also significantly associated with episodic memory performance, highlighting a potentially reciprocal structural pattern. Together, these results highlight the utility of surface-based measures of hippocampal morphology for relating variability in structural features other than volume to episodic memory in neurotypical young adults.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic