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Stress thwarts our ability to plan ahead by disrupting how we use memory, Stanford study finds - Stanford
Pairing brain scans with virtual-navigation tasks, researchers found that people make less efficient and effective plans when stressed.
New research from Stanford University has found that stress can hinder our ability to develop informed plans by preventing us from being able to make decisions based on memory.
“We draw on memory not just to project ourselves backward into the past but to project ourselves forward, to plan,” said Stanford psychologist Anthony Wagner, who is the senior author of the paper detailing this work, published April 2 in Current Biology. “Stress can rob you of the ability to draw on cognitive systems underlying memory and goal-directed behavior that enable you to solve problems more quickly, more efficiently and more effectively.”
Combined with previous work from Wagner’s Memory Lab and others, these findings could have broad implications for understanding how different people plan for the future – and how lack of stress may afford some people a greater neurologically-based opportunity to think ahead.
Pairing brain scans with virtual-navigation tasks, researchers found that people make less efficient and effective plans when stressed.
New research from Stanford University has found that stress can hinder our ability to develop informed plans by preventing us from being able to make decisions based on memory.
“We draw on memory not just to project ourselves backward into the past but to project ourselves forward, to plan,” said Stanford psychologist Anthony Wagner, who is the senior author of the paper detailing this work, published April 2 in Current Biology. “Stress can rob you of the ability to draw on cognitive systems underlying memory and goal-directed behavior that enable you to solve problems more quickly, more efficiently and more effectively.”
Combined with previous work from Wagner’s Memory Lab and others, these findings could have broad implications for understanding how different people plan for the future – and how lack of stress may afford some people a greater neurologically-based opportunity to think ahead.