“Stress impairs your brain’s ability to link memories — dampening insight” [Nature]:
The brain connects new and old information to make inferences through a cognitive process called integration. For example, if you have a memory of your friend wearing a bright green jacket, and you see a bright green jacket on a park bench, you might integrate your memory and the visual input to infer that your friend is at the park. This ability can be impaired in individuals with some mental-health conditions, such as anxiety disorders and psychosis.
The brain area called the hippocampus is essential for integration.
On the experiment’s first day, 121 participants were asked to memorize a series of paired images, each containing one image of an animal and one image of either a face or a scene.
The next day, roughly half of the participants underwent a mock job interview that required them to defend their suitability for a hypothetical role and perform complex mental mathematics. Participants in the control group, meanwhile, were asked to give a speech about a topic of their choice and complete a simple mental maths task.
Afterwards, participants were presented with another series of paired images, with each pair containing a picture of an animal and of a 3D shape.
Then, the participants were shown, one by one, the 3D shapes that they’d seen previously alongside a collection of various faces and scenes. They were asked to select the face or scene most likely to be associated with each 3D shape.
At which point the paywall kicks in. We’ll never know what happened next!
The hippocampus is, of course, where St. Augustine matriculated….