COLUMBUS – Researchers at Ohio State think they’ve found a link between long-term stress and memory loss that could help soldiers, victims of bullying, even workers who suffer with horrible bosses.
The work, which appears in The Journal of Neuroscience, is the first study of its kind to establish the relationship between short-term memory and prolonged stress.
The OSU neuroscientists discovered that changes in the body’s immune system triggered by sustained stress plays a key role in the cognitive impairment and the findings could lead to treatment for repeated, long-term mental assault, according to lead researcher Jonathan Godbout, associate professor of neuroscience at Ohio State.
“It’s possible we could identify targets that we can treat pharmacologically or behaviorally,” he said.
Mice used in the study are exposed to dominance by an alpha mouse, repeated “social defeat” that aimed to mimic chronic psychosocial stress experienced by humans. After being repeatedly exposed to repeated visits from a larger, aggressive “intruder mouse,” the mice had a hard time recalling where the escape hole was in a maze they had mastered prior to the stressful period.
“This is chronic stress,” Godbout said. “It’s not just the stress of giving a talk or meeting someone new.”
They also had measurable changes in their brains, including evidence of inflammation brought on by the immune system’s response to the outside pressure. This was associated with the presence of immune cells, called macrophages, in the brain of the stressed mice.
The research team was able to pin the short-term memory loss on the inflammation and on the immune system, both important new discoveries, Godbout said.
Their work builds on previous research substantiating the connections between chronic stress and lasting anxiety.
The OSU researchers focused on the hippocampus, a hub of memory and emotional response, in hopes of uncovering the secrets behind stress and cognitive and mood problems with a long-range goal of finding ways to help those who are anxious, depressed and suffer from lasting problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder.