Stress impairs your brain’s ability to link memories — dampening insight
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01644-z
Stress impairs your brain’s ability to link memories — dampening insight
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01644-z
2 Comments
Acute stress makes it difficult to link memories of past events with fresh information, a study1 suggests. The results help to explain why people struggle to show insight under pressure.
The study, published today in Science Advances, combined brain imaging and psychological testing to show how stress disrupts people’s ability to tap into records of previous experiences and make deductions.
This is an interesting, and I’d say valuable study design, but I do think that the concept of “stress” can be taken out of context, as it tends to cast too wide of a net in casual conversation (implying acute and chronic stress, despite the acute investigation). The methods provide better context:
>The TSST is a well-established psychosocial stressor in which participants are exposed to a mock job interview, consisting of a free speech and a mental arithmetic task. During a 3-min anticipation phase, participants were instructed to prepare a free speech about why they are the ideal candidate for a job tailored to their interests. After the 5-min free speech, participants were asked to perform a 5-min mental arithmetic task, in which they had to count backward from 2043 in steps of 17. Throughout the free speech and the mental arithmetic task, participants were evaluated by a panel of two experimenters, dressed in white laboratory coats, who were introduced as experts in behavioral analysis. The panel remained cold and nonreinforcing. In addition, participants were videotaped and could see themselves on a screen placed behind the panel.