Psychological Stress Impairs Spatial Working Memory: Relevance to Electrophysiological Studies of Hippocampal Function
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1996
Keywords
psychological stress, hippocampal-independent long term vs hippocampal-dependent short term memory, rats
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
http://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7044.110.4.661
Abstract
Stress blocks hippocampal primed-burst potentiation, a low threshold form of long-term potentiation, thereby suggesting that stress should also impair hippocampal-dependent memory. Therefore, the effects of stress on working (hippocampal-dependent) and reference (hippocampal-independent) memory were evaluated. Rats foraged for food in seven arms of a 14-arm radial maze. After they ate the food in four of the seven baited arms, they were placed in an unfamiliar environment (stress) for a 4-hr delay. At the end of the delay they were returned to the maze to locate the food in the 3 remaining baited arms. Stress impaired only working memory. Stress interfered with the retrieval of previously stored information (retrograde amnesia), but did not produce anterograde amnesia. Stress appears to induce a transient disruption of hippocampal function, which is revealed behaviorally as retrograde amnesia and physiologically as a blockade of synaptic plasticity.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
No
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Behavioral Neuroscience, v. 110, issue 4, p. 661-672
Scholar Commons Citation
Diamond, David M.; Fleshner, Monika; Ingersoll, Nan; and Rose, Gregory M., "Psychological Stress Impairs Spatial Working Memory: Relevance to Electrophysiological Studies of Hippocampal Function" (1996). Psychology Faculty Publications. 1309.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/psy_facpub/1309
