Long-term exposure to glucocorticoids following chronic stress is detrimental to cognitive processes including learning and memory. Even so, short term glucocorticoid surges can facilitate cognition. Here the authors show that the circadian oscillation in circulating glucocorticoids is important for motor skill learning–induced dendritic spine remodeling. They also show that circadian glucocorticoid-mediated synaptic modification acts through non-transcriptional mechanism involving cytoskeleton remodeling and correlates with long-term memory retention.
- Conor Liston
- Joseph M Cichon
- Wen-Biao Gan
