Elsevier

Life Sciences

Volume 58, Issue 17, 22 March 1996, Pages 1475-1483
Life Sciences

Stress- and treatment-induced elevations of cortisol levels associated with impaired declarative memory in healthy adults

https://doi.org/10.1016/0024-3205(96)00118-XGet rights and content

Abstract

Two studies investigated the association between cortisol levels and memory performance in healthy adults. In a first study, 13 subjects were exposed to a brief psychosocial laboratory stress (“Trier Social Stress Test”) with a subsequent test of declarative memory performance. Results indicated a significant negative relationship between stress-induced cortisol levels and performance in the memory Task, I.e. subjects with high cortisol response to the stressor showed poorer memory performance. In a second experiment it was investigated if cortisol alone, i.e. independent of psychological stress, would also impair memory function. In this study, 40 healthy subjects received either 10 mg cortisol or placebo orally. One hour later they were tested for procedural and declarative memory and spatial thinking. Subjects who received cortisol showed impaired performance in the declarative memory and spatial thinking tasks but not in the procedural memory task. From these results we conclude that in healthy adults elevated free cortisol levels are associated with impaired memory function.

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      In contrast, the magnitude of the induced cortisol levels in male participants, 30–90 min after the hydrocortisone administration, resembled the cortisol response endogenously released upon the experience of a moderate psychosocial stressor (such as the Trier Social Stress Test) or the everyday morning awakening response (Kirschbaum and Hellhammer, 1994; Kirschbaum et al., 1996; Kuhlmann et al., 2005b; van Ast et al., 2014; Rimmele et al., 2015). Interestingly, similarly higher cortisol levels after hydrocortisone administration have been reported only in studies including female participants (Kirschbaum et al., 1996; Kuhlmann and Wolf, 2005; Schilling et al., 2013; Fleischer et al., 2019), while moderate cortisol levels were found in studies with only-male samples (Tops et al., 2003; van Ast et al., 2013). In the present study, although there is a statistically significant difference in BMI between female and male participants, which could explain the observed difference in cortisol levels -as the same dose of hydrocortisone may induce higher cortisol levels in participants of lower BMI, BMI is not linked to the reported cortisol effects on memory, which probably depend on a more intricate interaction of the variables.

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