Sabrina Gelbart's List: reflective_learning

• We saw memory impairment only in the individuals treated with the higher dose and only after four days of exposure. The good news is it appears that it would take several days of stresses like major surgery or severe psychological trauma in order for cortisol to produce memory impairment. And after a one-week wash-out period, memory performance returned to the untreated levels
• The remaining questions involve how much stress must be present before memory suffers. The cortisol levels produced in the study were significantly higher than those that occur during an average bad week. Most people would have to experience a severe medical situation or severe physical or psychological trauma. But Newcomer believes there may be some effects from long-term exposure to slightly lower levels, though those experiments have not yet been done.

• Jaime Holguin
• 
  Stressful situations in which the individual has no control were found to activate an enzyme in the brain called protein kinase C, which impairs the short-term memory and other functions in the prefrontal cortex, the executive-decision part of the brain
• Dr. Amy F. T. Arnsten of Yale Medical School
• "It doesn't have to be traumatic, as long as you feel out of control," she said. "Control is the essential factor.... If you are confident, you don't have these problems."
• Public Health Service, the Stanley Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, Stanley Medical Research Institute and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.

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