Impaired Memory Retrieval after Psychosocial Stress in Healthy Young Men

Glucocorticoids (GCs) are known to modulate memory in animals and humans. One popular model suggests that stress or GC treatment enhances memory consolidation while impairing delayed memory retrieval. Studies in humans have documented that treatment with GCs impairs delayed memory retrieval. Similar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of neuroscience Vol. 25; no. 11; pp. 2977 - 2982
Main Authors Kuhlmann, Sabrina, Piel, Marcel, Wolf, Oliver T
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Soc Neuroscience 16.03.2005
Society for Neuroscience
Subjects
Adult
Affect - physiology
Analysis of Variance
Attention - physiology
Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Humans
Hydrocortisone - metabolism
Male
Memory Disorders - etiology
Neuropsychological Tests - statistics & numerical data
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Saliva - metabolism
Stress, Psychological - complications
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Summary:Glucocorticoids (GCs) are known to modulate memory in animals and humans. One popular model suggests that stress or GC treatment enhances memory consolidation while impairing delayed memory retrieval. Studies in humans have documented that treatment with GCs impairs delayed memory retrieval. Similar alterations after exposure to stress have not been observed thus far. In the present study, 19 young healthy male subjects were exposed to either a standardized psychosocial laboratory stressor (Trier Social Stress Test) or a control condition in a crossover manner. After both treatments, retrieval of a word list (learned 24 h earlier) containing 10 neutral, 10 negative, and 10 positive words was tested. The stressor induced a significant increase in salivary free cortisol and a decrease in mood. Memory retrieval (free recall) was significantly impaired after the stress condition. Follow-up analysis revealed that negative and positive words (i.e., emotionally arousing words) were affected, whereas no effect was observed for neutral words. No changes were detected for cued recall, working memory, or attention. The present study thus demonstrates that psychosocial stress impairs memory retrieval in humans and suggests that emotionally arousing material is especially sensitive to this effect.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
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ISSN:0270-6474
1529-2401
1529-2401
DOI:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5139-04.2005