Cortisol-Induced Impairments of Working Memory Require Acute Sympathetic Activation.

Abstract

The present study assessed whether the effects of cortisol on working memory depend on the level of adrenergic activity (as measured by sympathetic activation) during memory performance. After exposure to a psychosocial stress task, participants were divided into cortisol responders and nonresponders. Cortisol responders showed working memory impairments during the psychosocial stress phase, when cortisol and adrenergic activity were enhanced, whereas nonresponders did not. During recovery, however, when cortisol levels were elevated but adrenergic activity was normalized, working memory of responders did not differ from that of nonresponders. Among several stress measures, cortisol was the only significant predictor for working memory performance during stress. These findings suggest that adrenergic activation is essential for the impairing effects of stress-induced cortisol on working memory.

Performance on a declarative memory task is better in high than low cortisol responders to psychosocial stress

“…Moreover, applying a within-subjects design, the present study was able to compare high GC-responders and low responders to the TSST. While this corroborates findings of possible positive correlations between stress-induced GC changes and declarative memory, our results appear to be in contrast to results reported by others who demonstrated a deterioration of memory performance in TSST responders (Kirschbaum et al, 1996;Wolf et al, 2001b;Takahashi et al, 2004;Elzinga and Roelofs, 2005). This different finding may be explained by the different memory functions tested or by the time of testing (morning vs. afternoon).…”

“…As a consequence, recent studies have explored memory performance in groups with high versus low cortisol responses to a psychosocial stress paradigm revealing inconsistent results. In one study, high responders were shown to display better declarative memory (Domes et al, 2002), whereas high responders showed impaired memory performance in other studies (Wolf et al, 2001b;Takahashi et al, 2004;Elzinga and Roelofs, 2005).…”

Hydrocortisone reduces emotional distracter interference in working memory

“…In rats, it was shown that both lesions of the basolateral amygdala, and propranolol administration blocked the WM impairment induced by corticosterone . In line with these animal studies, WM impairment has specifically been found during stress (Elzinga and Roelofs, 2005), or in the first part of the WM study assessed after stress exposure (Schoofs et al, 2008), which might be associated with the influence of concurrent adrenergic activation. However, it should be noted that using the Sternberg task we also found WM impairment after the stressor was terminated (Oei et al, 2006).…”

“…Probably the best alternative explanation for finding GCinduced WM enhancement is task-related. Our task contained distracters, and is therefore not the same as the WM task version used in previous studies (Lupien et al, 1999;Oei et al, 2006;Schoofs et al, 2008;Wolf et al, 2001;Elzinga and Roelofs, 2005). The addition of distracters has changed the WM task significantly.…”

“…In humans, both chronic (Young et al, 1999) and acute GC administration (Lupien et al, 1999;Wolf et al, 2001) led to impaired WM. In addition, several studies in healthy people found that acute stressinduced GC elevations are related to impaired WM performance (Elzinga and Roelofs, 2005;Oei et al, 2006;Schoofs et al, 2008).…”