Sleep, stress, and traumatic memory

Abstract

Intense stress has the potential to produce traumatic memories that are core features of chronic mental disorders. However, encountering even intense stress most often does not have a persisting negative impact on health. Stress outcomes appear to involve complex interactions of sleep, learning, stressor qualities, and individual differences in resilience and vulnerability. This chapter will discuss how these interactions can impact the formation of traumatic memories, with a focus on factors that can differentially lead to normal and pathological stress outcomes. It will discuss the potential roles of different types of learning, stress resilience and vulnerability, and the neurobiological substrates that regulate interactions of stress, sleep, and the formation of traumatic memories. A case will be made that, given its role in learning and the processing of emotion, sleep may be key to fully understanding normal and pathological outcomes of intense stress.