The memory It is a function of the brain that allows us to project ourselves not only back into the past, but also into the future, to plan events.
However, a recent investigation of the Stanford University has found important evidence that demonstrates the influence of stress on our ability to develop plans. By studying the results of the participants' brain scans, the researchers found that people make less efficient and effective plans when stressed.
In recent years, the rate of people who come to a consultation because of the stress or anxiety. The peculiarities of the current rhythm of life, added to other personal circumstances, could be responsible for this increase. Therefore, it is essential that professionals keep their training in Psychology, with the aim of providing the patient with quality care, based on the latest scientific evidence.
Thus, this latest evidence suggests that stress is a state that can depriving people of their ability to tap into the cognitive systems underlying memory, as well as goal-directed behavior, which allows us to solve problems more quickly and effectively.
According to the researchers' results, the procedure by which our planning capacity is reduced due to stress involves the network of the hippocampal frontal lobe, which is responsible for disconnecting memory.
To achieve these findings, the research team was in charge of monitoring the brain activity of the participants through the functional magnetic resonance imaging technique (fMRI) while roaming virtual cities.
Once they had become familiar with the surroundings, they were returned to another of the areas they had already visited and were asked to walk to a target location..
Likewise, the stress factor randomly, selecting some of the participants at random who were told that they could receive an electric shock during the trip.
In this way, the researchers found that the people who received this message tended to resort to the usual routes, while those who did not have this stressor they were more imaginative and took newer routes based on memories acquired from previous trips.
Moreover, before starting the route to the target location, brain scans revealed that stressed people were less likely to activate the hippocampus, a brain structure that should have been active if they had been remembering the previous routes.
Likewise, they also experienced less activity in their networks of the frontal-parietal lobe, which is the structure that allows us to align neural processes with current objectives, making it difficult to retrieve and use memories.
In this way, it is the first study that shows how the interruption of the network of the hippocampal frontal lobe is responsible for turning off memory playback during a planning session due to stress.
Currently, researchers have focused on how this process affects older people, who are more likely to suffer episodes of memory loss, which, added to stress, could accentuate this deterioration.
To do this, they have begun to carry out studies similar to this one, but in people aged 65 to 80 years, with the aim of understanding how associations between stress, memory and planning develop in groups of older individuals.
Lucie stern, one of the main researchers of this study and professor of Social Sciences at Stanford University affirms that "it is a form of neurocognitive privilege that people who are not stressed can use their memory systems to behave more optimally".
And he concludes that it would be essential to better understand this process, since there may be people who do not behave as effectively due to being under a stressful situation..
The findings of this research could have important implications for the future, achieving understand how people plan for the future and how the absence of stress can optimize this process, which could be translated into better decisions, which can be applied in areas of special importance and that underlie a context of greater stress, such as work.
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