The relationship between stress induced cortisol levels and memory differsbetween men and women

Epidemiological as well as experimental studies in elderly subjects have su ggested that postmenopausal women are more susceptible to the memory impair ing effects of elevated cortisol levels than elderly men. Little is known h owever about gender differences in the susceptibility to acute stress in yo ung subjects. In the present study a total of 58 healthy young subjects lea rned a word list, with recall being tested after a brief distraction task. Twenty-two subjects had to learn the list after exposure to a psychosocial stressor (Trier Social Stress Test: TSST), while the remaining subjects ser ved as controls. Free cortisol was determined via saliva samples taken befo re and 10 minutes after stress. Subjects exposed to the stressor, did not s how impaired memory performance per se when compared to the control,group. However the cortisol increase in response to the stressor was negatively co rrelated (r=-0.43, P <0.05) with the memory performance within the stressed group (i.e., subjects showing a larger cortisol response recalling less wo rds than subjects showing only a small cortisol increase). Additional analy sis revealed, that this correlation was solely caused by the strong associa tion observed in men (r=-0.82, P <0.05), while no association was observed in women (r=-0.05, P=ns). Our data suggests, that gender modulates the asso ciation between cortisol and memory after stress. Whether these differences reflect activational effects of sex steroids or developmentally-programmed sex differences awaits to be determined. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. Al l rights reserved.