Stress, memory, and the predictive brain - 2026 Dirk Hellhammer Award

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Stress significantly impacts learning and memory, aiding adaptation to challenging situations.
• Enhanced memory for stressful events and temporally adjacent experiences is crucial for survival.
• Existing frameworks suggest stress broadly enhances memory encoding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose that stress-induced memory enhancements serve to update internal models of the environment.
• To investigate the role of prediction error (PE) in selective memory formation under stress.
• To re-evaluate the mechanisms of memory enhancement during stressful episodes.

Main Methods:

• Theoretical review drawing on the predictive brain framework.
• Synthesis of emerging empirical evidence on stress, memory, and prediction error.
• Analysis of how unexpected events influence memory consolidation under stress.

Main Results:

• Memory enhancement under stress is not uniform; it is selective.
• Prediction error (PE) associated with events is a key driver of memory boost.
• Stressful episodes and nearby events are better remembered when they involve high PE.

Conclusions:

• Stress-induced memory enhancements are adaptive, primarily facilitating environmental model updating.
• Prediction error (PE) plays a critical role in selecting which memories are consolidated under stress.
• This PE-centered perspective offers insights into stress-related mental disorders and memory distortions.