Do you recognize this sneaky warning sign of stress?

Some warning signs of stress are easy to spot, but there is one that is creeping up on you without you realizing it. This symptom of stress is: impaired memory and loss of concentration! Do you forget why you went into a room? Do you forget what to buy at the grocery store? Stress may be the culprit!

Difficulty concentrating and remembering things

You probably know the feeling: you enter a room to do something, and you realize that you have completely forgotten what it was that you came to do.

Researchers at Notre Dame University have found out why this is. In their study, published in 2011, they found that it is the act of walking through the doorway that causes the instant loss of memory. The study further showed that this is because our brain is only designed to hold a finite amount of information at once, and a location change (such as entering a room) may trigger the loss of some pieces of information to make space for new ones.

While this can happen to anyone from time to time, stress and anxiety make this sort of forgetfulness worse. The Covid-19 pandemic illustrates this clearly. Many people seem to have concentration problems because of Covid and the measures taken such as confinement. We have also seen several patients in our own practice who complain that they forget why they went to the kitchen a dozen times per day, or not being able to retain a telephone number long enough to actually make a call. It seems to be difficult for many people to stay concentrated on even the simplest of tasks and to get things done, be it at home or at work.

Working memory is impaired during stress

What is happening in the brain when you forget things is a malfunction of working memory. This is the part of the memory that enables you to grasp new information, form it into a cohesive thought, and hold onto it long enough to do what you need to do. Working memory is closely related to concentration and attention. You are focusing on a particular task, goal or behavior that you want to get accomplished.

Working memory is thus the ability to reason in real time. However, scientific studies have revealed that rapidly changing circumstances, worry, anxiety and stress can all have a significant, negative impact on your ability to focus.

When you are stressed, your focus is mostly on the stressor (the problem that causes stress). This is basically good. You can concentrate on dealing with the stressor without being distracted. However, as a consequence, there is not enough space in your working memory to store and process new incoming information unrelated to the stressor. You will therefore not be able to focus on other things, and start to forget even the simplest things such as what you wanted to get from the kitchen.

The stress hormone cortisol affects working memory

The question that comes up is of course: How does stress affect working memory? One of the ways our body deals with stress is to activate specific hormonal systems. One of these is the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA-axis). The HPA-axis consists of a series of events starting in the hypothalamus at the base of the brain. When you encounter a stressor, the hypothalamus is triggered to produce a stress hormone called CRF. CRF is then released into the blood and reaches the nearby pituitary gland. This small organ will respond with the release of another stress hormone called ACTH. ACTH, in turn, travels through the blood and is detected by the adrenal gland that is sitting on the kidneys. Finally, the adrenal glands release the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol is one of two main stress hormones (next to adrenaline) and helps our body to combat stress.

Unfortunately, cortisol has particular side effects. Scientists have found that cortisol impairs working memory, both in the short and long term. In the short term, this helps to focus specifically on the stressor at hand. For example, you will be able to stay concentrated during a job interview without being distracted by birds passing by the window, the perhaps impressive furniture of the office where you are being interviewed, or by any thoughts that are unrelated to the discussion. This is basically a good thing.

In the long term, with chronic stress and constantly elevated cortisol levels, this becomes problematic. The preoccupation with a stressor does not leave much room for other thoughts and the processing and storing of incoming information.

Researchers have shown that people with high levels of blood cortisol have much poorer memory when compared with people with normal cortisol levels. Interestingly, impaired memory is present in these people even before obvious symptoms of impaired memory set in! MRi scans revealed a slight decrease in brain volume in people with high cortisol levels before symptoms started to show.

Cortisol and stress start their effects on memory therefore silently, and you start to notice only when you realize that you start forgetting things. Also, forgetting increases over time. Stress and cortisol worsens memory slowly. Forgetting and difficulty concentrating are symptoms of stress that creep up on you, without you realizing this at first.

Train the brain?

You may have heard that you can exercise working memory. There are lots of games out there that are claimed to improve memory. However, experts agree that playing most of them doesn’t help much. The only thing you are really doing is to get better at the games you play, but this does not translate into anything useful in real life. They don’t improve remembering your shopping list. It is like trying to train people to play soccer by letting them run.

There is, however, an exercise that seems more promising, at least in some studies. It is called the N-back. It is like the classic Concentration game (or Memory game), in which players have to find pairs of matching cards. Instead of pairs, though, there is only one object that moves around the grid-style board. Players have to remember the object’s position through a certain number (n) of position changes. However, there is still debate on whether the N-back game will be of help in everyday life.

Rebooting your working memory

If memory games and training do not do much for your working memory in real life, are there any other options to make the performance of memory better?

There are two different, but complementary, strategies that you could follow.

The first is to cut down the input of new information. For Covid-19, for example, you could decide to no longer watch and read the news. This allows you to detach yourself somewhat from the worries that come with the pandemic. The same goes for limiting the time you spend on social media. Social media are high-paced sources of information of all sorts, and can fill up your working memory quickly. This is especially true when you are under stress, when the capacity of your working memory is rather limited.

The second strategy is to reduce stress. If we take the Covid-19 example again, try to focus on things that you can do, rather than on the things you cannot do. The problem with Covid is that you may not be in control of your professional or private life, with all the confinements and other restrictions that many governments have imposed (in addition to the threat of becoming seriously ill of course). Trying to find perspective or to develop new sorts of activities may help to regain at least some control. Alternatively, a probably effective measure you can easily take yourself is to simply convince yourself that there is nothing wrong with struggling. Everybody will have difficult moments and phases during life, and you don’t have to put up a brave face all the time. Accepting that things are not going well may take some stress away all by itself. It is OK not to feel OK. If you are fixating on your stress, you will have problems getting things done.

In general, accepting to struggle and finding ways to deal with stress are good approaches, not only to improve working memory but to fight off other negative effects of chronic stress and high cortisol levels. To achieve this, you could keep a diary in which you describe where, when and with whom you feel stressed. This will identify the causes of your stress. You could try to become more resilient to stress by practicing yoga or mindfulness, or to try to change conditions that give you stress, be they at work or at home. This may not always be easy, but with the articles on Stressinsight.com, you will have a wealth of information at your disposal to reduce stress and improve working memory in the process.