eye-tracking-cortisol-sleep-vs-wake-consolidation-delay-combining

Eye Tracking, Cortisol, and a Sleep vs. Wake Consolidation Delay: Combining Methods to Uncover an Interactive Effect of Sleep and Cortisol on Memory

Although rises in cortisol can benefit memory consolidation, as can sleep soon after encoding, there is currently a paucity of literature as to how these ...

Boston College

Hypervigilance toward ambiguous or threatening stimuli is a prominent feature in many trauma survivors including active and returning soldiers. This study set out to investigate the factors that contribute to hypervigilance in a mixed sample. One hundred forty-five individuals, 50 of whom were war zone veterans, filled out a series of questionnaires including the Hypervigilance Questionnaire (HVQ; Kimble, Fleming, & Bennion, 2009). Other participants included military cadets, college undergraduates, and a traumatized community sample. In this sample, a history of military deployment and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms independently predicted hypervigilance. The findings suggest that deployment to a war zone, in and of itself, can lead to hypervigilant behavior. Therefore, characterizing hypervigilance as pathological in a veteran sample must be done so with caution.

Contributors to hypervigilance in a military and civilian sample.

This Short Review critically evaluates three hypotheses about the effects of emotion on memory: First, emotion usually enhances memory. Second, when emotion does not enhance memory, this can be understood by the magnitude of physiological arousal elicited, with arousal benefiting memory to a point but then having a detrimental influence. Third, when emotion facilitates the processing of information, this also facilitates the retention of that same information. For each of these hypotheses, we summarize the evidence consistent with it, present counter-evidence suggesting boundary conditions for the effect, and discuss the implications for future research.

Oversimplification in the study of emotional memory.

Separate lines of research have demonstrated that rises in cortisol can benefit memory consolidation, as can the occurrence of sleep soon after encoding. For the first time, we demonstrate that pre-learning cortisol interacts with sleep to benefit memory consolidation, particularly for negative arousing items. Resting cortisol levels during encoding were positively correlated with subsequent memory, but only following a period of sleep. There was no such relation following a period of wakefulness. Using eye tracking, we further reveal that for negative stimuli, this facilitative effect may arise because cortisol strengthens the relationship between looking time at encoding and subsequent memory. We suggest that elevated cortisol may "tag" attended information as important to remember at the time of encoding, thus enabling sleep-based processes to optimally consolidate salient information in a selective manner. Neuroimaging data suggest that this optimized consolidation leads to a refinement of the neural processes recruited for successful retrieval of negative stimuli, with the retrieval of items attended in the presence of elevated cortisol and consolidated over a night of sleep associated with activity in the amygdala and vmPFC.

Kelly A. Bennion

Department of Psychology

Boston College

Eye Tracking, Cortisol, and a Sleep vs. Wake Consolidation Delay: Combining Methods to Uncover an Interactive Effect of Sleep and Cortisol on Memory

Kelly A. Bennion

.css-o250i3{font-size:18px;font-family:Open Sans,sans-serif;line-height:21.6px;}Department of Psychology

Boston College

Eye Tracking, Cortisol, and a Sleep vs. Wake Consolidation Delay: Combining Methods to Uncover an Interactive Effect of Sleep and Cortisol on Memory

Department of Psychology