Stress and navigation

We review the complex relationship between stress and spatial navigation in the brain. We consider differences between the effects of acute and chronic stress and the impacts of different sources of stress. Literatures are reviewed from both psychological and neural perspectives from both human and animal research. Critical individual factors such as age and sex can modulate the impacts of stress on navigation. Notably, neural and cognitive responses to a stressor can shift as time progresses and this can have major implications for navigation depending when it occurs relative to the stressor. There are many aspects of this literature that are understudied and yet to be explored and this article highlights those aspects for future research.