Kurt Cobain Early Life Stress

Kurt Cobain is well-known as a singer and guitarist, mostly because of his role in the famous grungeband Nirvana. But unfortunately for him, he also had quite a few struggles in life, like a tough childhood, addiction and psychological disorders. This case study is about the possible relationship between Cobain’s difficulties and the hippocampus.
Cobain’s problematic childhood caused a lot stress to him. The early life stress he experienced could have damaged his hippocampus. Various people did research on the effect of early life stress on the hippocampus. There is no consistent evidence that the volume of the hippocampus is reduced by early life stress. That is because a reduction of the volume of the hippocampus was found in adults,

Kurt also wrote a song called ‘Lithium’, which is the most prescribed medicine for bipolar disorder. Gilbertson et al. (2002) found that the size of the hippocampus is a predictor for pathologic vulnerability. This means that a person with a larger hippocampus is less likely to develop a mental disorder (like PTSD) when exposed to a traumatic event, in comparison with people who have a smaller hippocampus. This could suggest that Kurt Cobain had a smaller hippocampus, which made him more vulnerable to develop mental disorders like depression. Yvette and Sheline (2011) did research on depression and the hippocampus. They state that there’s an interaction between depression and the volume of the hippocampus: depression correlates with a smaller hippocampus. This is caused by changes in the amount of glia cells and neuropil content (Willard, Riddle, Forbes & Shively, 2013). Glia cells are important for the speed and quality of communication between neurons, so less glia can result in slower or less communication between neurons, which in turn causes the hippocampus to be reduced in size (Willard et al.,