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Memory Consolidation Processes of Emotionally Arousing Memories across a Stress Manipulation

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Katelyn Cliver¹ (), Elizabeth Goldfarb², Elizabeth Phelps³, Lila Davachi⁴, Alexa Tompary¹; ¹Drexel University, ²Yale University, ³Harvard University, ⁴Columbia University

Memory is adaptable, allowing it to change and transform over time. To assess how a memory evolves through consolidation, researchers examine the reactivation of previously encoded traces during retrieval. This process provides information about the content and fidelity of a memory and how it is impacted by external factors such as acute stress. Our study investigates how memory reactivation highlights the effects of internal factors, like valence, and external factors, like stress, on memory. We conducted a two-day imaging experiment and found that stress influences item and associative memory. Participants learned pairs of negative words and neutral objects while rating their arousal and valence for each pair. They then completed item and paired associative recognition tasks 24 hours later. We used multivariate encoding-retrieval similarity analyses to assess how stress and valence impacted memory reinstatement over time. In preregistered analyses, stress impaired item recognition relative to baseline, whereas associative retrieval remained unaffected. When associative memory was divided into specific- and gist-item memory, participants identified specific items more accurately across all conditions, though post-encoding stress reduced this difference. Neuroimaging analyses showed that the match between encoding and retrieval patterns in the hippocampus was strongest in the no-stress condition, suggesting impaired reactivation under stress. In the medial prefrontal cortex, we observed impaired reactivation for highly arousing versus neutral memories, regardless of stress condition. Together, these findings, alongside planned analyses of reactivation during rest, will help us identify how stress influences memory consolidation in the context of emotional memory.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic