Stress may enhance the brain’s ability to encode and store memory, a new Yale study finds.
A team led by Yale Department of Psychiatry’s Elizabeth Goldfarb, PhD, found study participants were more able to remember specific pairings of images after taking cortisol, a key stress hormone.
“We discovered this pathway where cortisol is helping the hippocampus talk to itself, and that helps people remember emotional experiences better,” Goldfarb says.
The hippocampus is a key brain region involved in encoding memory. Cortisol boosts connectivity in this region to enhance memory, according to Yale researchers.
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