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Stress has widespread effects on the brain.Credit: K H Fung\/Science Photo Library<\/p>\n
Acute stress<\/a> makes it difficult to link memories of past events with fresh information, a study1<\/a> suggests. The results help to explain why people struggle to show insight under pressure. <\/p>\n The study, published today in Science Advances, combined brain imaging and psychological testing to show how stress disrupts people\u2019s ability to tap into records of previous experiences and make deductions.<\/p>\n The combination of behavioural testing and neural imaging \u201cto actually see what\u2019s going awry is really compelling\u201d, says Brice Kuhl, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, who was not involved in the study.<\/p>\n Only connect<\/p>\n The brain connects new and old information to make inferences through a cognitive process called integration. For example, if you have a memory of your friend wearing a bright green jacket, and you see a bright green jacket on a park bench, you might integrate your memory and the visual input to infer that your friend is at the park. This ability can be impaired in individuals with some mental-health conditions, such as anxiety<\/a> disorders and psychosis.<\/p>\n The brain area called the hippocampus is essential for integration. Since it is also particularly vulnerable to stress, Lars Schwabe, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Hamburg in Germany, and his colleagues decided to test how acute stress would affect the brain\u2019s ability to integrate information and make inferences.<\/p>\n Memory task<\/p>\n On the experiment\u2019s first day, 121 participants were asked to memorize a series of paired images, each containing one image of an animal and one image of either a face or a scene.<\/p>\n The next day, roughly half of the participants underwent a mock job interview that required them to defend their suitability for a hypothetical role and perform complex mental mathematics. Participants in the control group, meanwhile, were asked to give a speech about a topic of their choice and complete a simple mental maths task. <\/p>\n
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