ASSESSMENT OF COGNITIVE FUNCTION AND RELATIONSHIP TO STRESS REACTIVITY

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. Considerable research has focused on the relationship between stress and cognitive performance. In humans, high levels of cortisol produced by stressors or by administration of glucocorticoids have deleterious effects on declarative memory, face recognition memory, and working memory. However, there is little research on the impact of reduced stress reactivity on cognitive performance. Such research requires either reducing glucocorticoid levels experimentally or studying populations with lower stress reactivity. We have previously shown that monkeys with SIB have lower stress reactivity than controls. We therefore tested the hypothesis that lower stress reactivity might enhance cognitive performance in two groups of male rhesus monkeys (10 SIB, 8 Control). The monkeys were exposed to a box transfer task involving visible, invisible, and no transfer trials. An experimenter concealed a treat in one of three boxes. She then moved that box next to another one and transferred the treat either in sight of (visible) or out of view of the monkey (invisible); on some trials she made no transfer. The experimenter then revealed the empty box and allowed the monkey to search for the treat. SIB monkeys performed better than controls overall (p less than .05) and as a group performed significantly better than chance on the difficult invisible transfer (p less than .05). Within the SIB group, monkeys performing better than chance on this transfer had significantly lower cortisol levels than those that did not (t=-2.45, p less than .05). Overall, successful performance was negatively correlated with plasma cortisol levels. Our data suggest that lower hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical reactivity facilitates cognitive performance.