NAGIOS: RODERIC FUNCIONANDO

Stress effects on cognitive function in healthy adults

Repositori DSpace/Manakin

IMPORTANT: Aquest repositori està en una versió antiga des del 3/12/2023. La nova instal.lació está en https://roderic.uv.es/

Stress effects on cognitive function in healthy adults

dc.contributor.advisor	Salvador Fernández-Montejo, Alicia
dc.contributor.author	Hidalgo Calvo, Vanesa
dc.contributor.other	Departament de Psicobiologia	es_ES
dc.date.accessioned	2015-06-04T07:51:13Z
dc.date.available	2015-06-04T07:51:13Z
dc.date.issued	2015	es_ES
dc.date.submitted	05-06-2015	es_ES
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10550/44166
dc.description.abstract	In our lives, we are constantly exposed to different sources of stress, specifically psychological or social. Our reaction to stress is an adaptive response due to its role in facilitating survival. However, stress can also have immediate and delayed damaging consequences for health, and it is considered one of the most significant health problems of the 21st century, according to the World Health Organization (2001). The impact of stress extends to most of the physiological systems (i.e. cardiovascular, digestive, immune, neuroendocrine or nervous), resulting in numerous diseases. Cognitive problems stand out among the stress effects related to the nervous system. Given the large impact that these problems can have on society in general, and on individuals in particular, the need to understand more about this link is clear. This is one of the reasons for the growing interest in investigating the main mechanisms underlying the stress impact on different cognitive processes, such as memory, attention or executive functions. Several factors related to the characteristics of the stressor, the individual and the cognitive process assessed seem to play an important role in determining the direction of these stress effects. Thus, this thesis focuses on the way stress affects cognition, specifically memory performance, in healthy adults, analyzing the role of some of these factors. The first section of the first chapter discusses the evolution of the stress concept and explains what the stress response is. In the second part, the link between stress and memory is explained, detailing which brain structures are related to the control of the stress response and the cognitive processes. Then, a brief summary of the studies about the effect of acute stress on memory performance is presented. Moreover, the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal axis (HPA-axis) in basal conditions (non-stress) is addressed, again summarizing the studies that have investigated the relationship between HPA-axis functioning and cognitive performance. Finally, the chapter ends with the main goals and hypothesis of this thesis and a general description of the material and methods used in the empirical chapters. In the second chapter, the first study is presented. In this study, we examined the effects of stress-prior learning on two types of memory (i.e. non-declarative and declarative memory) in young adults. Here, the material to be remembered is neutral, and the role of sex is considered. Next, in the third chapter of the thesis, following a similar design, the second study carries out a direct comparison of older and young adults. The fourth chapter describes the third study, which investigates the stress effects on memory retrieval. Now, the stressor is applied before the retrieval tasks, and the material to be remembered is neutral and emotional. Again, older and young adults of both sexes are compared. In the last study, the fifth chapter analyzes the relationships between the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and the diurnal cortisol slope (DCS), two different components of the diurnal cortisol cycle, and different memory tasks. The sixth chapter contains a general discussion and the main findings of the aforementioned studies; the strengths and limitations of this thesis and the direction of the next steps in the research on this topic are discussed here. Finally, the seventh chapter presents the main conclusions of the studies included in this thesis.	es_ES
dc.format.extent	216 p.	es_ES
dc.language.iso	en	es_ES
dc.subject	cortisol	es_ES
dc.subject	alfa-amilasa	es_ES
dc.subject	memoria	es_ES
dc.subject	diferencias de edad	es_ES
dc.subject	diferencias de sexo	es_ES
dc.subject	estrés agudo	es_ES
dc.title	Stress effects on cognitive function in healthy adults	es_ES
dc.type	doctoral thesis	es_ES
dc.subject.unesco	UNESCO::PSICOLOGÍA	es_ES
dc.embargo.terms	9 months	es_ES