How do emotion, stress hormones and sex hormones influence episodic memory of events and their context of space and time, in humans?

How emotion and stress influence episodic memory to serve our survival remains a fundamental question for neuroscience research. Prior research showed that memories of emotional and stressful events are often strong, vivid, and later remembered with high confidence. However, existing evidence is less homogenous about memory of their context, such as the “where” and “when” an event happened. The gaps in previous research result from several factors, such as: studying stress effects selectively for a certain memory stage, using isolated items without their context, disregarding the role of different emotions, and of specific stress and sex hormones. 

In the first part of my talk, I will present my previous work aiming to address these gaps. I will focus on three questions: a) How do different emotions affect our memory?; b) How do emotion and stress affect our memory of complex events and their context of space and time?; c) How does stress hormone cortisol affect the way we sense and remember time?. In this work, I have used a combination of behavioral experiments with neuroimaging methods (fMRI), physiological and neuroendocrine measures, pharmacological manipulations and virtual reality. 

Even though emotion stress effects on memory are globally beneficial, stressful memories embedded in a wrong temporal context can be maladaptive, and impaired temporal organization of our memories is implicated in mental disorders such as: major depressive disorder (MDD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and post-traumatic stress dirorder (PTSD). Critically, the prevalence of these disorders is higher in females compared to males.

In the second part of my talk, I will present my project proposal for the INSERM CRCN 2026 competition, My project aims to understand how these time-related mechanisms underlying mental health are affected by the interaction of stress and sex hormones in females. 

This project will contribute to better understanding of stress, memory and mental health, and pave the way to developing sex- and hormone-specific interventions.

Monika Riegel est invitée par Michael Pereira.