Stress effects on students long-term memory.

PAMELA LOPES DA CUNHA; VIOLA H; BALLARINI F; LUCIA CHISARI

Mar del Plata

Congreso; Congreso de la SAN; 2017

Long-term memory (LTM) formation requires protein synthesis. We have demonstrated in rodents that a weak learning task (spatial object recognition-SOR) which only induces short-term memory (STM) can be stabilized into LTM if an event of acute stress is experienced 1 hour after. It was postulated that stress provides the necessary proteins, which could be captured at tagged sitesinduced by the weak learning task, process referred to as behavioral tagging. However it was observed that if stress occurs 1 hour before learning is not able to promote a LTM and results suggests an effect of stress on the tag. Surprisingly, when the rats are exposed to a stress 1 hour after strong SOR the promoting effect don´t occur and we postulated could be due to competitionfor resources necessary for memory consolidation. In the present work we show data aimed to investigate if an acute stress could induce similar effects in humans. We made activities using a modification of the Rey-Osterrieth?s complex figure task to test graphic memory in students and analyze the effects of exams on the promotion of LTM and its temporal curse. The behavioral results are similar to those found in rodents: when students had a programed exam beforelearning they didn?t show LTM promotion, while students who had exam 60 min after learning showed positive or negative effects on figure retention depending of strength of learning.