Stress and Learning

A recent study looking at the effects of stress on learning found that acute stress, which is a short-term but sometimes intense stress reaction, can reduce the reactivation of short-term memories and, consequently, reduce their integration into the hippocampus where they would otherwise be converted into long-term memories.

The reactivation of memories during new experiences and learnings, and the comparison of old and new memories (looking for overlaps and similarities, but also distinctions and differentiations), is fundamental to the process of converting short-term memories into long-term learnings.

This study suggests that stress, even short-term, momentary blips of stress, can reduce the activation of the hippocampus during this process, which reduces the amount of successful comparing and contrasting between old and new memories that can occur.

It also reduces the amount of integration (which is what helps us build mental models about the world) and increases the amount of differentiation (which helps us distinguish between similar, but distinct things) occurring in the hippocampus, which can also result in reduced memory storage.

Someone who is trying to learn while stressed might therefore have more trouble than a peer who isn’t stressed, because the stressed brain doesn’t do as good a job comparing and contrasting old and new memories, older memories failing to reactivate at the level necessary for maximal learning lock-in.

This lines up with past research on the subject, which has almost universally shown that stress leads to worse educational and learning outcomes, though it also pinpoints a specific mechanism by which this occurs, distinct from others that have been previously documented.