Transient cytoskeletal anisotropy encodes short-term mechanical memory
Cells can experience time-varying mechanical cues, particularly when navigating through changing and complex microenvironments. Yet whether and how cells retain and use a short-term mechanical memory of recent deformations remains unclear. Here we show that, in glioblastoma cells, this memory is encoded by transient cytoskeletal anisotropy. Using uniaxial magneto-mechanical actuation aligned or perpendicular to the cell long axis, nanoindentation, and selective cytoskeletal perturbations, we find that distinct architectures of the actin cytoskeleton drive opposite mechanical responses: actin stress fibers mediate stiffening under stretch, whereas the actin cortex underlies softening under perpendicular loading. Vimentin intermediate filaments are essential to stabilize actin organization under load, preserving deformation-specific mechanics. Quantitative imaging reveals that mechanical actuation induces network-specific alignment and anisotropy, stronger for actin than vimentin, that persists transiently after unloading and bias subsequent responses, revealing a short-lived, deformation-dependent mechanical memory. To integrate these observations, we develop a multi-network constitutive model that links cytoskeletal architecture and loading history to cell-scale mechanics, reproducing both the asymmetric mechanical responses and the measured reorganization dynamics. These findings provide a structural basis for short-term mechanical memory and suggest how cancer cells could exploit residual anisotropy to adapt to fluctuating solid stresses and confinement, transiently biasing polarization, force transmission, and directional persistence during invasion. They also identify vimentin-actin coupling and the kinetics of cytoskeletal remodeling as potential levers to limit the mechanical adaptability of invasive cancer cells.