Salivary cortisol and short and long-term memory for emotional faces in healthy young women.

Elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol are associated with increased episodic memory for emotional events. Elevated levels of cortisol are also seen in anxiety and depression disorders. Because it is well documented how both depression and anxiety are related to valence-specific biases in attention and memory, the present study sought to establish relations between basal cortisol levels and episodic memory for neutral, positive and negative stimuli. Thirty-nine healthy young women performed an immediate recall and long-term (20 min) version of a task measuring spatial memory for neutral, happy and fearful faces. The sample as a whole showed a valence-specific better performance for happy faces than for neutral faces in the immediate recall condition, and a better performance for all emotional faces in the long-term condition. Salivary cortisol measures were found to be related to better memory for emotional faces in the long-term condition. This relation to cortisol was not valence-specific and is similar to effects predicted by a model on long-term consolidation and the influence of cortisol in this process.