The Effect Of Cortisol And Sleep On Memory - 1262 Words

Question Bennion, Steinmetz, Kensinger, and Payne (2013) addressed the overarching question of how cortisol, sleep, and emotional arousal interact to influence memory. More specifically, they conducted a study to investigate the following: 1) whether resting levels of the stress hormone cortisol affect memory consolidation differently for emotional versus neutral stimuli, 2) whether this effect differs following a period of sleep versus a period of wakefulness, 3) whether resting cortisol levels affect the relationship between attention to stimuli during encoding and subsequent memory, and 4) whether this effect, too, differs following a period of sleep versus wakefulness. These research questions were used to examine the interaction†¦show more content†¦Although the authors initially presented their hypothesis as a dichotomous outcome, there were several possible alternatives. Elevated cortisol could predict better subsequent memory for neutral stimuli than for negative stimuli or h ave no effect on memory. Cortisol could have a greater effect following the period of wakefulness than the period of sleep, or the Sleep/Wake condition could have no effect. Results could also show only main effects of cortisol, valence, and sleep, with no interaction effects, or cortisol levels could have no significant effect on memory, regardless of the valence of the stimuli or the Sleep/Wake condition. For the two research questions addressed during the second level of the study, Bennion et al. (2013) hypothesized that elevated cortisol at encoding would promote an interaction between attention and consolidation—i.e., that objects viewed for a shorter duration of time would be more likely to be forgotten, and objects viewed for a longer duration would be more likely to be remembered. They also hypothesized that this effect would be greater following the period of sleep, and that neural activity in memory retrieval would be centered on the limbic areas. This hypothesis also makes a reasonable prediction based on prior research suggesting that neural activity for mental retrieval centers on the limbic regions