The effects of acute stress on episodic retrieval and prospection
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- The ability to store and retrieve memories enables us to span temporal gaps by bringing information from the past to inform our thoughts, decisions, and actions in the present, and further, to prospectively plan for the future. However, in many real-world settings, the ability to flexibly retrieve episodic memories may be strongly influenced by acute stress. Here, we examined (i) how acute psychological stress influences the neural mechanisms underlying episodic retrieval and episodic memory-guided prospection, and (ii) how these disruptions in neural activity affect behavior under stress. In Experiment 1 we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multivariate classification analyses to examine the effects of acute stress during recollection. We showed that stress reduced the probability of recollecting past details, and that this impairment was driven, in part, by a disruption of the relationship between hippocampal activation, cortical reinstatement, and memory performance. Moreover, while stress did not alter the strength of category-level cortical reinstatement during successful recollection, memories expressed with high confidence were weakened (less accurate) under stress and this stress-induced decline in accuracy could be explained by reduced posterior hippocampal activity. Finally, we found evidence that stress altered the relationship between frontoparietal function and retrieval decision uncertainty. In Experiment 2 we tested the impact of stress on memory-guided prospection by leveraging a naturalistic spatial navigation task, and examined whether stress decreases the flexibility of goal- directed planning, thereby restricting efficient behavior when faced with novel goals. Using fMRI we revealed that neural activity in regions critical for controlled memory retrieval, including posterior hippocampus and lateral prefrontal cortex, were disrupted during novel, goal-directed planning under stress; at the same time, the probability of efficient navigation was reduced under stress. Surprisingly, neural activity and navigation performance recovered when the stress participants were given a second opportunity to re-navigate to goals in these environments. These data contribute to the growing literature documenting effects of acute stress on episodic retrieval and prospection, and critically, provide valuable insights into the neural mechanisms underlying stress-induced degradation of episodic memory in humans.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Sorenson, Stephanie Ann Gagnon |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Psychology. |
| Primary advisor | Wagner, Anthony David |
| Thesis advisor | Wagner, Anthony David |
| Thesis advisor | Gardner, Justin, 1971- |
| Thesis advisor | Gross, James J, (Professor of psychology) |
| Thesis advisor | Poldrack, Russell A |
| Advisor | Gardner, Justin, 1971- |
| Advisor | Gross, James J, (Professor of psychology) |
| Advisor | Poldrack, Russell A |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Stephanie Ann Gagnon Sorenson. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Psychology. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2017. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2017 by Stephanie Ann Gagnon Sorenson
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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