How Stress Impacts Learning and Memory – The Good, the Bad, and the Biological

Post by Rebecca Hill 

The takeaway

Stress, in particular chronic stress, is often linked to poor outcomes for learning and memory. However, depending on the situation, the right amount of stress may have positive learning outcomes.

What does stress do to the brain and body?

We all experience stress to some degree in our everyday lives. Stress impacts us mentally and physically with profound effects throughout the entire body. First, the stressor activates brain regions such as the hypothalamus and pituitary, which activates the sympathetic nervous system – commonly known as the fight-or-flight response. This causes the release of adrenaline, leading to increased attention and better memory storage. This helps you remember the most important information about a stressor so you can cope with similar future events. Typically, this is a useful response, but if the stress is too intense, it can lead to stress and anxiety disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

How is learning impacted by stress?

Learning and memory can be positively or negatively impacted by stress, depending on the circumstances. If you’ve ever experienced a strong negative event, you can likely remember extremely specific details about where you were and what you were doing at the time of that event. This is due to the sympathetic nervous system’s incredible ability to help you form detailed memories of stressful events. However, you may also have times in your life when you were so stressed out, you hardly remember them. This usually happens when stress is chronic or does not overlap with the timing of the information to be learned. In this way, stress can impair an individual’s ability to form memories. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), some researchers found that in these cases, stress can even reduce brain activity in the regions associated with memory, such as the hippocampus.

When does stress lead to poor outcomes?

Many current studies focus on stressful situations that can worsen learning capabilities. A research study found that depressed students dealing with stress have worse memory and find it more difficult to learn during school. One study used a virtual reality simulation to see how stress impacts individuals’ abilities to complete a navigational planning task. They found that participants who were stressed had more disrupted memory than control participants. Another study found that acute stress particularly disrupts spatial learning and memory. Stress can have even worse impacts on the developing memories of children. For example, excessive screen time can cause chronic stress which leads to increased anxiety and negatively affects learning and memory. Both long-term and short-term stress can lead to negative impacts, both early and later on in life.

Could stress have positive outcomes?

While stress is often considered negative, a recent paper discussed the possibility of stress having a positive influence on learning and memory. For example, completing a challenging task initially causes a small amount of stress, but can lead to learning after overcoming the challenge. The researchers emphasized that the key to stress leading to positive outcomes is both the context of the stress and how an individual interprets the stressor – a calm, quiet environment is much more likely to lead to a positive learning outcome than a noisy one. Also, when an individual approaches a stressful situation with a growth-oriented mindset, rather than one that expects a negative outcome initially, it can help the individual cope with stress. So, while stressful situations are often unavoidable, they can be used as opportunities to learn and grow, especially if the stress is moderate, in the right context, and approached with a positive mindset.

References +

Aprilia, A., & Aminatun, D. (2022). INVESTIGATING MEMORY LOSS: HOW DEPRESSION AFFECTS STUDENTS’ MEMORY ENDURANCE. Journal of English Language Teaching and Learning, 3(1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.33365/jeltl.v3i1.1719

Brown, T. I., Gagnon, S. A., & Wagner, A. D. (2020). Stress Disrupts Human Hippocampal-Prefrontal Function during Prospective Spatial Navigation and Hinders Flexible Behavior. Current Biology, 30(10), 1821-1833.e8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.03.006

Meyer, T., Quaedflieg, C. W. E. M., Bisby, J. A., & Smeets, T. (2020). Acute stress – but not aversive scene content – impairs spatial configuration learning. Cognition and Emotion, 34(2), 201–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1604320

Neophytou, E., Manwell, L. A., & Eikelboom, R. (2021). Effects of Excessive Screen Time on Neurodevelopment, Learning, Memory, Mental Health, and Neurodegeneration: A Scoping Review. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 19(3), 724–744. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-019-00182-2

Rudland, J. R., Golding, C., & Wilkinson, T. J. (2020). The stress paradox: How stress can be good for learning. Medical Education, 54(1), 40–45. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.13830

Schwabe, L., Hermans, E. J., Joëls, M., & Roozendaal, B. (2022). Mechanisms of memory under stress. Neuron, 110(9), 1450–1467. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.02.020