The research found that mild levels of stress improved working memory. Working memory is the cognitive function that allows people to temporarily hold and manipulate information in their mind, it allows the brain to hold onto information for a short period of time to complete a task, solve a problem or make a decision. It is closely related to attention and it is essential for a wide range of cognitive tasks such as reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making.
There is, however, a caveat, the researchers said. The findings are specific to low to moderate stress. Once your stress levels go above moderate levels and become constant, that stress becomes toxic. “But there’s less information about the effects of more limited stress,” Oshri said. “Our findings show that low to moderate levels of perceived stress were associated with elevated working memory neural activation, resulting in better mental performance.”
The results suggested that individuals who reported low to moderate stress levels had increased activity in the parts of the brain that involve working memory. Participants who said they experienced chronic high levels of stress showed a decline in those areas. To analyze working memory, participants were presented with a series of four types of images of things like tools and individuals’ faces and later asked to recall whether they were the same photos they were shown before. The researchers then analyzed MRIs of the participants’ brains as they completed the tasks to assess neural activation in different parts of the brain.