Title: How Stress Works With and Against Your Memory
Headings: How Stress Works With and Against Your Memory
How Stress Works With and Against Your Memory
Stress and Memory
Improve Your Memory Under Stress

Content: Research shows that if people are questioned and given misleading information about something they experienced, that information will color their memory and influence what they thought they experienced and that this information (because it is more recent than the event itself) is easier to recall. This is why false memories can be created with well-intentioned lines of questioning. 1 ﻿
A recent meta-analysis was conducted on 113 stress studies, meaning that researchers examined that many independent studies on stress and memory to determine what the major findings were. There is ample evidence that stress affects memory, and these studies just lent more support for that research: 2 ﻿
One of the most interesting findings was that stress could impede the formation of memories if it occurred prior to or during encoding, the time during which the memory is formed. The good news is that there was a short delay between encoding and the formation of memory. Also, if the material being learned was directly related to the stressor, memory actually improved. Even better, post-encoding stress actually improved memory formation and retrieval as well, meaning stress that occurred after the memory was formed actually led to better memory-making. 2 ﻿
Stress increased cortisol, but the amount of cortisol was not directly related to the effects of stress on memory. This means that if you create more cortisol during your stress response, this won't necessarily mean that your memory will be more impaired than someone who is less hormonally-responsive.