Stress makes it difficult to combine memories and make insights

This can explain why new insights and wise conclusions are not easily born when stressed.

Science Advances published in the magazine in the study brain imaging and combination tasks requiring memory and reasoning were used as the method.

Before the second phase of the combination test, the test subjects were stressed with an imaginary job interview and difficult mathematical tasks. The control group received more relaxed additional tasks.

The results showed that stress weakened the ability to use previous memories and use them in the reasoning task. During the mock job interview, participants who were stressed performed worse.

Based on brain imaging, the phenomenon is especially related to the hippocampus, which helps connect previous memory content to new learning. The imaging revealed that the function of this brain area was weaker in stress.

“Seeing concretely what goes wrong is really convincing,” neuroscientist Brice Kuhl quoth In the journal Nature.

Kuhl is a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon in Eugene, USA, who was not involved in the study.

Researchers According to

Instead, thinking seems to narrow under pressure so that the brain processes memory images separately and does not easily build a coherent whole from them.

The combination of things related to each other is important in human life, because it is based on it that we form an understanding that goes beyond individual observations.

Structured information sets emerge in the mind, with the help of which we can perceive new connections.

According to the researchers, the broader message of the study is that the effects of stress on memory are more complex than previously thought. The load can also reduce the flexibility of thinking and make it difficult to interpret new situations.