Does older adults’ cognition particularly suffer from stress? A systematic review of acute stress effects on cognition in older age

Adult age differences in the psychophysiological response to acute stress

“…Thus, it cannot be ruled out that the TSST might not be as effective in older (vs. young) adults and that lower physiological reactivity might be explained, at least in part, by lower stress appraisal in older adults. This could also explain partly differing results between the present and past studies, as different ageadapted versions of the speech task might vary in their relevance for older adults (see Discussion in Mikneviciute et al, 2022). Thus, it seems important to validate an age-adapted version of the speech task of the TSST, especially for adults aged 65 + to better compare between studies inducing psychosocial stress in older age.…”

Acute stress impacts reaction times in older but not in young adults in a flanker task

“…The few existing aging studies showed that compared to non-stressful conditions, acute stress had no effects on executive functioning 17 – 19 in older adults, and a recent meta-analysis corroborated this further 14 . These results are in clear contrast with the vast literature investigating the effects of acute stress on PFC-dependent cognition in young adults 30 , 31 .…”

“…For instance, there is abundant research consistently pointing towards detrimental effects of chronic stress on diverse cognitive abilities in older adults 7 – 10 but the studies tackling short-term cognitive effects after acute stress exposure have been mostly conducted in young adults 11 – 13 . In the last decade, a growing body of research on cognitive aging has addressed the effects of acute stress on memory performance 14 – 16 , but only few studies have examined the effects of acute stress on executive functioning in older age 17 – 19 . Given the well-established contribution of executive processing to the functioning of complex daily life activities in late adulthood 20 , 21 , it is important to understand how acute stress might impact performance of older adults’ executive abilities.…”

“…The goal of the present study is to fill the research gap regarding acute stress effects on cognitive inhibition (using a flanker task) in older age and contribute to the question of whether stress effects on cognitive inhibition differ between young and older adults. It was predicted that stress (vs. control) would impair cognitive inhibition performance in young adults 12 , while it was expected that older adults’ inhibition performance would be less affected by stress (vs. control), or to a lesser degree compared to young adults, based on null findings on executive functioning in late adulthood 14 and the effects of aging on cognitive inhibition 39 .…”

Understanding the relationships between physiological and psychosocial stress, cortisol and cognition

“…( 257 ) and Wu and Yan ( 258 ) demonstrated how rapidly these acute doses of cortisol impair retrieval in healthy individuals (approximately 8 minutes). Other research suggests that age may be a mediating factor in which younger people are less vulnerable to the effects of cortisol on memory performance than their older counterparts ( 43 , 259 – 262 ). These findings might elucidate the negative effect of chronically high levels of cortisol on cognitive functioning found in individuals with AD ( 246 ).…”