2006, Number 1
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Rev Mex Neuroci 2006; 7 (1)
Stress and Memory
Escobar A, Gómez GB
Language: Spanish
References: 45
Page: 8-14
PDF size: 107.79 Kb.
ABSTRACT
Stress is the most common problem affecting human beings and most living creatures; multiple normal physiological processes and behavioral patterns become altered by acute and chronic stress. As observed in human beings, in non-human primates and rodent experimental models, among a variety of negative effects, stress affects learning and memory, normal sleep patterns, decreases immunity, and renders the individual susceptible to develop an addictive behavior. Activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis by stressors discharge and increase levels of glucocorticoids and catecholamines in order to maintain homeostasis. Though memory may be enhanced, leading to memory consolidation, in the first stage of the alarm reaction, the action of corticosterone and adrenalin on the basolateral amygdala and hippocampus tend to deteriorate memory. In a test aiming to remember neutral, positive or stressing negative words, only emotionally charged words are remembered, the neutral words tend to be forgotten. Psychosocial stress affects working and attention memory; implicit and explicit memory are affected in stressing conditions leading to post-traumatic stress disorder and severe anxiety. Post traumatic stress disorder also generates hypertension, polypnea, increases muscle tension (freezing reaction in the rat), and fear reaction due to amygdalar activity; mechanisms involved include conditioning and long term potentiation. Among some other structures, the hippocampus, prefrontal and cingular cortices, all of them limbic structures, participate in the mechanisms that generate memory alterations. The practical application of this knowledge implies the possibility to avoid memory being altered in stressing situations, as it may occur during a personal interview, a scholar examination or a qualification test. A memory disorder possibly linked to stressing stimuli, is the so-called
global transitory amnesia. A benign entity whose precise etiology remains to be clarified. It consists of a sudden dramatic event of anterograde amnesia that totally reverts within 24 hours, the affected person shows no sequelae and recurrence does not occur. Several risk factors have been mentioned, namely venous vascular thrombosis, epilepsy and migraine, all of them associated to mesial temporal lobe activity; however, no clear cut evidence supports those etiological possibilities. The clinical characteristics of the global transient amnesia make one consider the possibility that under an acute stress situation the event could be triggered in susceptible persons.
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