Retrieval practice prevents stress-induced inference impairment and preserves rapid bridge-related memory reactivation

A hallmark of human memory is its ability to form novel inferences by linking discrete but related events. We examined whether acute stress impairs memory inference and if retrieval practice can buffer this effect. Participants were trained on image pairs, AB and BC, to establish interconnected triads (ABC) with a shared bridge element B. Twenty-four hours later, we induced acute stress in half of the participants and then tested their capacity to infer the indirect AC associations. Behavioral results indicated that acute stress-induced memory inference accuracy and speed, and retrieval practice was associated with attenuation of stress-induced impairment in A-C inference accuracy and speed. Using multivariate decoding analysis of human electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, we found neural evidence that bridge element B is rapidly reactivated during the inferential process, a neural signature predictive of subsequent successful inference. Importantly, stress disrupts this rapid neural reactivation of the bridge element, but retrieval practice buffers the stress effect and enhances the strength of reactivation signals beyond the non-stress condition. Time-frequency analyses of theta oscillations mirrored these effects of stress and retrieval practice on inference performance and neural reactivation. Collectively, our findings pinpoint rapid reactivation of the bridge element as an essential neural mechanism for memory-based inference. Although susceptible to stress, this mechanism can be enhanced through retrieval practice, suggesting that building robust memory traces renders subsequent inferences resilient to stress.