Hello everyone,

randomly thought of this question when I got one of these- a mind blank.

What causes them? I asked my biology teacher and he said that "it is caused by hormones made when you are stressed eg adrenaline, epinephrine and cortisol that affect your ability to remember things properly. These chemicals muddle up the brain." He also suggested that I put the question on here as a final discussion. Before I got this answer I thought that it is something related to chemicals blocking memories or chemicals blocking cognitive function which is essentially the same as the answer.

Any help on this would be appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance

Live long and prosper.

Your teacher sounds like a great guy, desperately trying to answer all your Biology questions. Despite the fact that there are far more expert people here, he could try to answer by referring to stress as a source of memory loss/blank mind during tests etc...

 

How about this site?

 

 

 

Memory processing involves many steps each of which is relatively easy to disrupt. Stress primarily acts as a source of interference and can prevent each of the stages of memory processing (encoding, consolidation, and retrieval) from occurring http://www.humanstress.ca/stress/effects-of-stress-on-memory/is-your-memory-affected-by-stress.html

Edited September 27, 20169 yr by jimmydasaint

Actually, now that I have thought about it, your teacher sounds like a complete moron. Hope he teaches you properly.