Blunted cortisol response to acute pre-learning stress prevents misinformation effect in a forced confabulation paradigm

Abstract

Research examining the effects of stress on false memory formation has been equivocal, partly because of the complex nature of stress-memory interactions. A major factor influencing stress effects on learning is the timing of stress relative to encoding. Previous work has shown that brief stressors administered immediately before learning enhance long-term memory. Thus, we predicted that brief stress immediately before learning would decrease participants’ susceptibility to subsequent misinformation and reduce false memory formation. Eighty-four male and female participants submerged their hand in ice cold (stress) or warm (no stress) water for 3 min. Immediately afterwards, they viewed an 8-min excerpt from the Disney movie Looking for Miracles. The next day, participants were interviewed and asked several questions about the video, some of which forced them to confabulate responses. Three days and three weeks later, respectively, participants completed a recognition test in the lab and a free recall test via email. Our results revealed a robust misinformation effect, overall, as participants falsely recognized a significant amount of information that they had confabulated during the interview as having occurred in the original video. Stress, overall, did not significantly influence this misinformation effect. However, the misinformation effect was completely absent in stressed participants who exhibited a blunted cortisol response to the stress, for both recognition and recall tests. The complete absence of a misinformation effect in non-responders may lend insight into the interactive roles of autonomic arousal and corticosteroid levels in false memory development.

An investigation into the impact of acute stress on encoding in older adults

“…Further, by enhancing memory for the video, pre-encoding stress could help improve subsequent source monitoring and reduce susceptibility to misinformation from the synopsis. Consistent with this idea, in studies with young adults, researchers have found that stress prior to a witnessed event both improved memory accuracy (Hoscheidt, LaBar, Ryan, Jacobs, & Nadel, 2014) and reduced susceptibility to post-event misinformation (Hoscheidt et al, 2014;Zoladz et al, 2017). However, no such effects were found in the present study.…”

Evaluación neuropsicológica en estados confabulatorios

“…En la confabulación pueden presentarse afirmaciones y acciones inintencionalmente incongruentes con el pasado, el presente y el futuro del paciente, y aunque es una alteración poco frecuente de la memoria y generalmente se encuentra en pacientes con afectación de PsicoesPacios / Vol. 15 n. 26 / enero-Junio, 2021 / issn-e: 2145-2776 esta, también puede encontrarse en sujetos con memoria y habilidades de aprendizaje normales (Dalla Barba et al, 2020;García Barco, 2020;Martín Juan et al, 2018;Zoladz et al, 2017).…”

“…La formación y evocación de recuerdos ha sido una pauta fundamental en el estudio de la neurociencia moderna, al igual que el hipocampo como región crítica para la formación de recuerdos episódicos (Molina, 2016;Terranova et al, 2019;Voss et al, 2019;Zoladz et al, 2017). El daño en esta estructura puede provocar la incapacidad de formar nuevos recuerdos, sin perjuicio de las memorias previamente adquiridas.…”

“…Asimismo, se ha encontrado que los pacientes con enfermedad de Alzheimer tienen mayor tendencia a confabulaciones provocadas que un grupo control, y que la confabulación se incrementa cuando la información sobreaprendida reemplaza pobremente a la información codificada por bajo monitoreo en la memoria, lo que deja ver de alguna manera que se requiere cierto grado de adecuada función del hipocampo para generar confabulaciones (McLachlan et al, 2019;Molina, 2016;Terranova et al, 2019;Zoladz et al, 2017).…”

“…Otros estudios imagenológicos han mostrado hallazgos relacionados con el lóbulo temporal medial y la conectividad reducida entre corteza orbitofrontal derecha, hipocampo derecho, uncus y corteza orbitofrontal izquierda, parahipocampo izquierdo, y giro fusiforme en pacientes confabuladores; además el hipometabolismo en regiones entorrinal y perirrinal izquierda y en corteza dorsolateral derecha, se correlacionan con errores de intrusión; el volumen del cíngulo anterior parece correlacionarse negativamente con la confabulación (McLachlan et al, 2019;Terranova et al, 2019;Voss et al, 2019;Zoladz et al, 2017).…”