Social stress-induced cortisol elevation acutely impairs social memory in humans

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).…”

Neuroprotection and Enhancement of Learning and Memory by BF-7

“…12,33) Beyond transient functional declines, severe physiologic, chemical, and environmental stress gives rise to anatomic and physiologic brain damage. 34,35) The discovery of methods to protect the brain would thus be meaningful. In this study, the BF-7 was investigated to determine whether it has a The level of acetylcholine is shown as a relative percentage compared with the control group.…”

Impaired Memory Retrieval after Psychosocial Stress in Healthy Young Men

“…Two studies observed memory impairments after stress (Payne et al, 2002;Jelicic et al, 2004), whereas most studies to date found no significant difference between the stress and the nonstress conditions (Kirschbaum et al, 1996;Wolf et al, 2001b;Domes et al, 2002;Takahashi et al, 2004). Several of the latter, however, observed associations between poorer memory and a stronger stress-induced cortisol increase within the treatment group (Kirschbaum et al, 1996;Wolf et al, 2001b;Takahashi et al, 2004). Only two studies have tested the effects of psychosocial stress on memory retrieval but failed to find significant effects, possibly for several reasons, which will be discussed later (Wolf et al, 2002;Domes et al, 2004).…”