Stress, Cortisol and the Modulation of Multiple Memory Systems

Stress is a common experience for most of us. The effects of stress are manifold - stress plays an important role in health and disease, in emotion regulation and cognitive functioning. This book focusses on the influence of stress on the use of multiple memory systems. Lars Schwabe gives a concise overview of the stress concept and the stress biology. He portrays multiple anatomically and functionally distinct memory systems and develops step by step his hypothesis that stress modulates multiple memory systems in favor of rather rigid habit memory and at the expense of flexible cognitive memory. Two experimental studies are presented that aimed to test this hypothesis. This book is targeted at all who are interested in stress and its effects on learning and memory, in particular at students and researchers in the fields of psychology, medicine, biology and neuroscience.