Stress Impairs Ability to Remember & Learn
 (NY, Reuters Health, 4/17/01)

Dr. David Diamond of the University of South Florida and his team of scientists placed rats in close proximity to a cat for prolonged periods to demonstrate how extreme stress negatively affects the ability to remember and learn. The rats exhibited stress in the electricity of the hippocampus (the part of the brain that stores information) and they forgot how to navigate a maze they had once mastered and took more time to re-learn the maze than prior to the stress.