Cortisol variation in humans affects memory for emotionally laden and neutral information

In a test of the effects of cortisol on emotional memory, 90 men were orally administered placebo or 20 or 40 mg cortisol and presented with emotionally arousing and neutral stimuli. On memory tests administered within 1 hr of stimulus presentation, cortisol elevations caused a reduction in the numb...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inBehavioral neuroscience Vol. 117; no. 3; p. 505
Main Authors Abercrombie, Heather C, Kalin, Ned H, Thurow, Marchell E, Rosenkranz, Melissa A, Davidson, Richard J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.06.2003
Subjects
Adolescent
Adult
Analysis of Variance
Double-Blind Method
Emotions - drug effects
Emotions - physiology
Humans
Hydrocortisone - blood
Hydrocortisone - pharmacology
Male
Memory - drug effects
Memory - physiology
Photic Stimulation - methods
Saliva - drug effects
Saliva - metabolism
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Summary:In a test of the effects of cortisol on emotional memory, 90 men were orally administered placebo or 20 or 40 mg cortisol and presented with emotionally arousing and neutral stimuli. On memory tests administered within 1 hr of stimulus presentation, cortisol elevations caused a reduction in the number of errors committed on free-recall tasks. Two evenings later, when cortisol levels were no longer manipulated, inverted-U quadratic trends were found for recognition memory tasks, reflecting memory facilitation in the 20-mg group for both negative and neutral information. Results suggest that the effects of cortisol on memory do not differ substantially for emotional and neutral information. The study provides evidence of beneficial effects of acute cortisol elevations on explicit memory in humans.
ISSN:0735-7044
DOI:10.1037/0735-7044.117.3.505