What’s the scariest thing that ever happened to you? You probably remember it vividly, down to the sinking feeling in your stomach and the sights, sounds and smells. Fear tends to produce some of our strongest memories; millions of people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) struggle to escape them.
But it’s a mystery exactly how the brain forms these memories. A new study in Nature Communications, however, illuminates some of these mechanisms for the first time. Research reveals how stress hormones change the way that neurons fire, ramping up the brain’s ability to encode new memories.
