Glucocorticoids interact with noradrenergic activation at encoding to enhance long-term memory for emotional material in women.

•Administered 20-mg hydrocortisone or placebo prior to viewing a series of images.•One week later we administered a surprise recall test of the images.•Hydrocortisone significantly increased cortisol levels, but had no effect on sAA.•Hydro significantly enhanced memory in subjects with an increase in sAA at encoding.