Impact of stress on cognitive processes

Stress has a major impact on our health, emotion, and cognition. In particular, stress may shape how much and what we learn and remember. It is generally assumed that stress enhances memory formation but impairs the retrieval of stored memories. Moreover, we could show in the past that stress promotes a shift from flexible, declarative memory processes to more rigid, procedural memory processes. There is accumulating evidence that these effects of stress are due to the concurrent action of glucocorticoids and noradrenaline on the basolateral part of the amygdala which then modulates memory processes in other brain areas such as the hippocampus. Although, most studies focused on the role of stress on hippocampus-dependent learning and memory, there is also evidence that stress may alter non-hippocampal forms of memory as well as other cognitive functions, including working memory, decision-making or cognitive control processes.

Stress is ubiquitous in modern societies. At the same time, concepts such as life-long learning become increasingly popular and working environments get more and more cognitively demanding. Thus, stress effects on cognitive processes are certainly highly relevant in educational and work-related settings. Moreover, however, the effects of stress on cognition have also critical clinical implications. Several mental disorders, such as depression or anxiety disorders, are characterized by dysfunctional stress response systems on the one hand and aberrant cognitive processes on the other hand. Understanding how stress alters cognitive processes may thus improve our understanding of these mental disorders and could ultimately open the door to novel therapeutic interventions.

We are interested in questions such as:

• How does stress change the contribution of multiple memory systems to instrumental learning or fear conditioning?
• What are the mechanisms underlying the superior memory for stressful events?
• How does stress affect decision-making processes?

Selected publications:

Kalbe, F., Bange, S., Lutz, A., & Schwabe, L. (in press). Expectancy Violation Drives Memory Boost for Stressful Events. Psychological Science.

Wanke, N., & Schwabe, L. (2020). Subjective uncontrollability over aversive events reduces working memory performance and related large-scale network interactions. Cerebral Cortex, 20, 3116-3129.

Simon-Kutscher, K., Wanke, N., Hiller, C., & Schwabe, L. (2019). Fear without context: acute stress modulates the balance of cue-dependent and contextual fear learning. Psychological Science, 30, 1123-1135.

Trapp, S., O'Doherty, J.P. & Schwabe, L. (2018) Stressful events as teaching signals for the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22, 475-478.

de Quervain, D., Schwabe, L., & Roozendaal, B. (2017). Stress, glucocorticoids and memory: implications for treating fear-related disorders. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 18, 7-19.

Wirz, L., Wacker, J., Felten, A., Reuter, M., & Schwabe, L. (2017). A deletion variant of the α2b-adrenoceptor modulates the stress-induced shift from ‘cognitive’ to ‘habit’ memory. The Journal of Neuroscience, 37, 2149-2160.

Kluen, L. M., Nixon, P., Agorastos, A., Wiedemann, K., & Schwabe, L. (2017). Impact of stress and glucocorticoids on schema-based learning. Neuropsychopharmacology, 42, 1254-1261.