Acute stress impairs visual path integration

• Published in: Neurobiology of stress Vol. 26; p. 100561
• Main Authors: Akan, Osman, Bierbrauer, Anne, Axmacher, Nikolai, Wolf, Oliver T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.09.2023; Elsevier
• Subjects: Acute stress; Entorhinal cortex; Grid cells; Navigation; Original; Path integration; Working memory; Acute stress; Path integration; Navigation; Working memory; Entorhinal cortex; Grid cells
• ISSN: 2352-2895; 2352-2895
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ynstr.2023.100561

Acute stress exerts substantial effects on episodic memory, which are often mediated by glucocorticoids, the end-product of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. Surprisingly little is known, however, about the influence of acute stress on human spatial navigation. One specific navigational strategy is path integration, which is linked to the medial entorhinal cortex, a region harboring glucocorticoid receptors and thus susceptible for stress effects. Here, we investigated effects of acute stress on path integration performance using a virtual homing task. We divided a sample of healthy young male participants into a stress group (nstress = 32) and a control group (ncontrol = 34). The stress group underwent the socially evaluated cold-pressor test, while the control group underwent a non-stressful control procedure. Stress induction was confirmed via physiological and subjective markers, including an increase of salivary cortisol concentrations. We applied linear mixed models to investigate the effect of acute stress on path integration depending on task difficulty and the presence or absence of spatial cues. These analyses revealed that stress impaired path integration especially in trials with high difficulty and led to greater decline of performance upon removal of spatial cues. Stress-induced deficits were strongly related to impaired distance estimation, and to a lesser extent to compromised rotation estimation. These behavioral findings are in accordance with the hypothesis that acute stress impairs path integration processes, potentially by affecting the entorhinal grid cell system. More generally, the current data suggests acute stress to impair cognitive functions mediated by medial temporal lobe regions outside the hippocampus. •Acute stress induced selective deficits in path integration (PI) in healthy adults.•Deficits were more strongly related to the distance component of PI.•Deficits occurred mainly in cases of high difficulty and in absence of spatial cues.•Exploratory analyses pointed to a potential switch in strategy use under stress.•Impaired grid cell system as a potential underlying mechanism.