Scientists Explain: Why Thinking Becomes Harder Under Stress

Intense stress significantly impairs the brain's ability to link existing knowledge with new experiences, according to a new international study. While the capacity to learn entirely new information remains largely intact, the crucial skill of making connections between past learning and present situations is substantially weakened.

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It showed that while intense stress does not completely prevent people from learning new information, it significantly weakens their ability to establish connections between old knowledge and new experiences.

This cognitive bottleneck can affect performance in high-pressure scenarios like exams, job interviews, and critical decision-making processes. The research, published in Science Advances and led by the University of Hamburg, explored the effects of acute stress on memory and information processing.

The study involved 121 healthy adults who were divided into two groups. One group underwent stressful tests, while the other performed similar but non-stressful tasks. Participants were first taught associations between specific visuals. The next day, they were shown new visuals related to the previously learned ones. Researchers then measured their ability to infer connections between information not directly presented.

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This situation can affect the way of thinking, especially in decision-making processes under high pressure, such as exams, job interviews, and critical decisions.

Results showed that stressed participants performed comparably to the control group in learning new visuals. However, they exhibited a significant drop in performance when asked to make indirect connections by integrating previously acquired knowledge with newly learned information. Scientists attribute this not to a general weakening of memory, but to a disruption in the brain's process of consolidating diverse experiences into a cohesive knowledge network.

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The research results showed that participants experiencing stress did not fall behind the control group in learning new visuals.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed notable changes in the hippocampus, a brain region critical for memory formation. In individuals under stress, old memories were less reactivated during the learning of new information. This suggests the brain records related experiences as independent memories rather than integrating them into a unified structure. The findings have implications beyond the lab, potentially explaining difficulties in applying known information to new situations in academic, professional, and even legal contexts.

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However, a significant performance decrease was observed when they were asked to establish indirect connections by combining previously acquired information with newly learned information.