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Acute cortisone administration impairs retrieval of long-term declarative memory in humans

Nature Neuroscience volume 3, pages 313–314 (2000)Cite this article

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Stress triggers a cascade of physiological events including glucocorticoid secretion from the adrenal cortex, which can influence memory function1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13. Exogenous glucocorticoids impair human declarative memory performance1,4,5, and hypercortisolemia associated with depression, Cushing's syndrome and old age is associated with memory impairments in humans3,6,7. Whereas treatments used in previous studies generally affect more than one memory phase and therefore cannot detect possible differential effects of glucocorticoids on the distinct phases of acquisition, consolidation and retrieval, here we show that treatment of healthy humans with cortisone at acute-stress levels specifically impaired retrieval of declarative long-term memory for a word list.

Healthy human (18 female and 18 male) volunteers aged 20–40 years (mean ± s.d., 28.8 ± 5.5) participated in the study. Subjects gave written informed consent, and the experiments were approved by the ethical committee of the University of Basel. We used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject design. On day 1, subjects viewed a series of 60 unrelated German nouns each presented for 4 s on a computer screen with the explicit instruction to learn them for immediate and delayed recall (24 hours after learning memory tests). For the free-recall test, subjects were asked to write down all the words they remembered. For the recognition test, subjects were asked to identify the originally presented words from a larger list with 60 additional words. Cortisone (25 mg; Novartis Pharma, Switzerland) or placebo (25 mg mannite) was administered once orally. Each group received doses at one of three different times (one hour before the retention test, one hour before word presentation or immediately after word presentation). Cortisone is quickly absorbed and transformed into hydrocortisone (cortisol). Significantly elevated salivary concentrations of cortisol one hour after the pharmacological treatment were similar to cortisol levels induced by major psychological or physiological stress1 (Table 1). After a 2-week interval, the procedure was repeated in the same individuals with another set of 60 words, but subjects received the treatment they had not received in the first experiment. Word sets and treatment order were balanced across subjects.

Table 1 Effects of 25 mg cortisone on saliva cortisol levels
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Figure 1: Effects of administering a single oral dose of cortisone (25 mg) on distinct memory phases.

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Acknowledgements

We thank K. Henke and K. Kräuchi for comments on the manuscript and C. Kirschbaum for cortisol analysis. Research was supported by the Roche Research Foundation (D.Q.), the Swiss National Science Foundation (3232-058420.99; D.Q.) and a Ralph W. and Leona Gerard Family Trust Fellowship (B.R.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry Research, University of Zürich, Lenggstr. 31, Zürich, 8029, Switzerland

    Dominique J.-F. de Quervain, Roger M. Nitsch & Christoph Hock

  2. Department of Psychiatry, University of Basel, Wilhelm Klein-Str. 27, Basel, 4025, Switzerland

    Dominique J.-F. de Quervain & Christoph Hock

  3. Center for the Neurobiology of Learning Memory and Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, University of California, Irvine, 92697-3800, California, USA

    Benno Roozendaal & James L. McGaugh

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  1. Dominique J.-F. de Quervain
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Correspondence to Dominique J.-F. de Quervain.

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de Quervain, DF., Roozendaal, B., Nitsch, R. et al. Acute cortisone administration impairs retrieval of long-term declarative memory in humans. Nat Neurosci 3, 313–314 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/73873

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