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Stress Inhibits Brain's Ability to Grow

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the a-calm-monkey-is-a-smart-monkey dept.

Travoltus writes "Dr. Professor Elizabeth Gould claims to have shown that, with marmoset primates, stress causes the brain to switch to survival mode in which it thinks only about survival; it simply does not invest new cells in other, more complex thought processes. Dr. Gould also suggests that poverty has an adverse effect on the brain. Dr. Gould is a Princeton researcher who concentrates on studying adult neurogenesis, a phenomenon that, 20 years ago, most scientists believed did not occur."

78 comments

  1. What about other people? by Kawahee · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What about the other people that thrive on working to deadlines and with demanding workloads? I'm sure there are many professions that are very stressful that require people to keep themselves 'sharp' and alert at all times.

    Or is there a difference between positive and negative stress against the brain?

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    1. Re:What about other people? by michaeltoe · · Score: 1
      My guess is they become good at the work they do and stupid at everything else.

      Oh wait... that's called learning!

    2. Re:What about other people? by east+coast · · Score: 1

      I'm sure there are many professions that are very stressful that require people to keep themselves 'sharp' and alert at all times.

      It doesn't mean they're expanding their minds. They're just keeping busy.

      Or is there a difference between positive and negative stress against the brain?

      There's good stress?

      --
      Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
    3. Re:What about other people? by Kawahee · · Score: 1

      I meant the stress that people thrive on. 'Non-consequential' stress, where if you screw up it's not the end of your world. Bad stress is where if you stuff up, you lose your job, your income, your family needs to borrow money etc.

      --
      I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
    4. Re:What about other people? by east+coast · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I meant the stress that people thrive on. 'Non-consequential' stress, where if you screw up it's not the end of your world.

      Well, I see your point but being in a situation you "enjoy" is not necessarily beneficial. Even those who enjoy the fast paced life may not be in a good position as far as overall physical and mental health.

      --
      Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
    5. Re:What about other people? by pvt_medic · · Score: 2, Informative

      stress has many different meanings for different cultures and by different groups. Typically in medicine stress is looked at as something that will stimulate a physiological response. Stress is a needed part of our lives. without stress muscles would not grow, with out stress we would not learn, etc. The challenge is how much stress can one tolerate. Many people find that they become more effective when they are "stresses" the body is reacting to this stimuli, but eventually there is a point where even the most adaptive body will not be able to adquately respond to the stress.

      --
      30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
      Score:5, Troll
    6. Re:What about other people? by mikael · · Score: 1

      Usually, they will already have the experience to do that type of work, and so won't have to be really learning that much. That's why there are so many job requirements that require previous experience.

      As an example, it's a lot easier to learn a new skill in your own time, that when you are in a workplace environment working to a tight deadline.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    7. Re:What about other people? by happyemoticon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd characterize myself as the kind of person GP is talking about. However, I wouldn't characterize what I thrive on as stress, but focus and structure. Nothing makes me happier in the morning than knowing that I can go to work and focus intensely on something all day long, and go home with a sense of accomplishment that I finished it on time. When I have to multitask or I'm working on several non-essential projects at once, I feel dithery and lazy.

      I say this is different from stress because when I was in college, I had several friends - we were all sort of higher-achieving humanities students - who would get very stressed. They would do things like stop cleaning their apartments, eat nothing but potato chips for a week, sleep two hours a night, and generally fall apart as human beings around finals time.

    8. Re:What about other people? by Feanturi · · Score: 1

      Sure, there's a distinctly different physical sensation between 'challenge' stress and 'icky' stress. You are what you feel, so if you let your feelings guide you make sure to follow the good ones and try to ditch the bad ones. This makes a healthier brain, that succeeds more, leading to further improved stress, further growth, it's a self-feeding thing. It works the same way in reverse. Have a stressed-out unhealthy brain, it makes more mistakes/takes less chances//etc so creates more stress for itself by being all messed up, gets more messed up by that, and finally crashes somewhere living in a cardboard box in an alley.

    9. Re:What about other people? by rew · · Score: 1

      I'd say that it's possible that this research will show that people who work like that on a permanent basis have less capability for learning new stuff.

      The brain in "survival mode" is a wonderous thing. It can do things that you wouldn't hold possible before. Some people might be taking advantage of that.

      On the other hand, there must also be some disadvantages: There is no such thing as a free lunch. So Evolution didn't make it the 'default'. Maybe less (or none at all?) sex.

    10. Re:What about other people? by Sir+Holo · · Score: 2, Insightful


      What about the other people that thrive on working to deadlines and with demanding workloads? I'm sure there are many professions that are very stressful that require people to keep themselves 'sharp' and alert at all times.

      It depends what you would call "stress."

      As a child, did you go to bed hungry?
      Did you grow up only ever knowing one parent?
      Were you stopped by cops on the street and searched, from as young as 10 years of age?
      Were you taken away from your parents at an early age?
      Did you, as a child, have to hide in the bathroom to get away from a day-and-night party your mother was having, just to get a little bit of your homework done?
      Do you come from a "broken" home?

      These things are the "stress" the researcher is looking at. The marathon sessions in the stacks at the library, or the projects working under deadline, that guys like us take on, are not that - they're taking on challenges. From TFA:

      For the last several years, she and her post-doc, Mirescu, have been depriving newborn rats of their mother for either 15 minutes or three hours a day. For an infant rat, there is nothing more stressful. Earlier studies had shown that even after these rats become adults, the effects of their developmental deprivation linger: They never learn how to deal with stress. "Normal rats can turn off their glucocorticoid system relatively quickly," Mirescu says. "They can recover from the stress response. But these deprived rats can't do that. It's as if they are missing the 'off' switch."

      And a little bit more from TFA:

      On a cellular level, the scars of stress can literally be healed by learning new things. ... As predicted, putting marmosets in a plain cage--the kind typically used in science labs--led to plain-looking brains. The primates suffered from reduced neurogenesis and their neurons had fewer interconnections.

      However, if these same marmosets were transferred to an enriched enclosure--complete with branches, hidden food, and a rotation of toys--their adult brains began to recover rapidly. In under four weeks, the brains of the deprived marmosets ... demonstrated significant increases in the density of their connections and amount of proteins in their synapses.

      The realization that typical laboratory conditions are debilitating for animals has been one of the accidental discoveries of the neurogenesis field.

    11. Re:What about other people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Nothing makes me happier in the morning than knowing that I can go to work and focus intensely on something all day long, and go home with a sense of accomplishment that I finished it on time.
      Get a life.
    12. Re:What about other people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      However, I wouldn't characterize what I thrive on as stress, but focus and structure. Nothing makes me happier in the morning than knowing that I can go to work and focus intensely on something all day long, and go home with a sense of accomplishment that I finished it on time.

      I would recommend reading Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. You seem to "get it" already, so I think it might be very interesting to you. I promise it's not new agey or anything. I just think it will click with you in a lot of ways.

    13. Re:What about other people? by dr.badass · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm sure there are many professions that are very stressful that require people to keep themselves 'sharp' and alert at all times.

      The difference here is between "challenge" and stress. There is basically a channel between challenges that are so insignificant as to provoke boredom, and challenges that are overwhelming and produce stress and anxiety. Between those are challenges that we can handle and are rewarding as a result.

      People who thrive when working to deadlines do so because it isn't especially stressful, and may in fact be less stressful for them than having no deadlines. It might be exhausting work, but if it were truly stressful they would probably be less productive as a result. It seems from this article that real stress may actually prevent one from learning and keeping sharp, so the image of the perpetually exhausted but highly productive student or worker as a shining example of success in action is wrong more often than not.

      --
      Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
    14. Re:What about other people? by dusik · · Score: 1

      There's eustress, e.g., an interesting challenge. There's distress, e.g., gotta finish the test in 5 minutes and you're only half done.

      It simply doesn't make sense to lump those two distinct phenomena into a single "stress" and put a negative label on it.

    15. Re:What about other people? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      There is a large difference. I can see it when I compare the source code I write today to what I used to write before my layoff in 2001. I can see it in my political attitudes before 2000 and after. I can see it in my own abiliity to trust other human beings now, and in the growth of bigotry in my mind. I completely agree with this study- and I'd say that while postive stress can concentrate the mind on the task on hand, negative stress is extremely destructive to sanity.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    16. Re:What about other people? by drmike0099 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Although this is almost a philosophical question, from a scientific standpoint there's very little difference (that I've ever heard of) between positive and negative stress. They all create the same reactions in the body. It probably has more to do with chronic vs. acute stress. Positive stress (e.g. getting a new job and having to change your lifestyle to accomodate it, having a new baby, heading off to college) are typically more of an acute nature and therefore usually don't have the negative side effects. Conversely, poverty, joblessness, diseases, and certain other negative stresses are typically very long-term in nature. We know that long-term stress is worse, but that people can even decompensate with short-term stress, and there are a lot of people who have very bad negative reactions even with positive stressors. Lots of psychology mixed into that, but at a high level it's true.

      As for people who function at different baseline stress levels, I can relate one study I know of. They looked at people's reaction after a disaster (I forget which one, an earthquake I believe) and what they did in the immediate aftermath. Some people shut down completely and did nothing. Most got more active and began doing things at a higher level. Some people, normally not active and not classic "leaders", began directing the activities of others in a very effective manner. The end result was a curve that was developed (x axis was stress, y axis was functionality) and it showed a slow upslope as stress got higher, most people performed at a higher level, but at the highest level there was a cliff-like drop off, where people all of a sudden ceased to function at high stress loads.

      The theory that came out of that (and having gone to medical school and operating in exactly the environment you describe where people "choose" demanding workloads, one that I think has face validity) is that individuals have different personal ways of moving along that curve that correspond to their own personal tolerance for stress. Someone who can't handle stress would fall off the end very quickly, and you could say is already operating at their highest point. Someone who can handle a lot of stress is almost impossible to push high enough to get over that cliff, and you can dump more and more stress and they simply keep handling it. That latter group actually get bored in low stress environments and can feel their personal functionality decline, and therefore avoid them (I'm one of those people). Vacation is often so boring I start to get depressed (which in itself is somewhat of a depressing thought!).

    17. Re:What about other people? by ezdude · · Score: 1

      Well, we certainly know our President's intellect has not been adversely affected by job stress.

    18. Re:What about other people? by eronysis · · Score: 1

      eustress/distress

    19. Re:What about other people? by sjames · · Score: 1

      Another factor is the metrics used for the judgement that a person has thrived on stress. Did that person 'thrive' or simply survive it. Is the stress a constant or is the success under the gun more the culmination of a few weeks of much less stressful preparation? Once work habits are adjusted, might the same person be MORE productive with less stress? Has QUANTITY of work been mistaken for QUALITY of work? I have seen the output of some people who supposedly thrive on stress at work. It was days late and nearly gibberish but everyone percieved that they thrived on stress and deadlines (wooshing by!) because of the sheer volume of paper they produced. I could easily be persuaded that some of it was evidence of a malfunctioning brain.

      Ever read real documents from a lawyer before a paralegal fixes it? Most are atrocious!

    20. Re:What about other people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, there is good stress and bad stress. One of the stresses Dr. Gould writes about in her ressearch is the stress of not enough activity or stimulation - just the opposite of what we often think of as a stressful situation. This insight has been critical to her work, and helped eliminate some of the mistakes in earlier work on adult neurogenisis. The best description of stress, and it's positive and negative effects, is still Hans Selye's - "The Stress of Life". In a nutshell, good stress is of limited duration and challenges the body, mind, or immune system - but does not overwhelm it. Bad stress is excessive in either intensity, time, or both.

  2. The leap from marmoset to man by nystagman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Interesting, but with few exceptions, humans are not marmosets.

    There is a bit more happening in my brain than in a marmoset's.

    --
    Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
    1. Re:The leap from marmoset to man by jbrader · · Score: 1

      Maybe the marmosets were so free from stress that they developed human-sized brains.

      --
      You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
    2. Re:The leap from marmoset to man by TeacherOfHeroes · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There is a bit more happening in my brain than in a marmoset's.

      Maybe theres more going on in your brain, but I didn't get the impression that thats really a factor here. It doesn't seem to be the amount of activity thats in question, but rather the ways in which animal brains works.

      Would you say that your brain is so different from the brains of other animals that they don't share basic characteristics?

      How often do you hear about experiments done on mice; do you stop and point out that mice are nothing like people each time?

    3. Re:The leap from marmoset to man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting, but with few exceptions, humans are not marmosets.


      So, in which ways are you a marmoset?

    4. Re:The leap from marmoset to man by Clover_Kicker · · Score: 3, Funny

      > There is a bit more happening in my brain than in a marmoset's.

      Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

    5. Re:The leap from marmoset to man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I, for one, welcome our new marmoset overlords.

    6. Re:The leap from marmoset to man by TheClam · · Score: 1

      Core sample, we need a core sample!

    7. Re:The leap from marmoset to man by nystagman · · Score: 1

      I agree that the basic physiological operations (e.g. habituation, etc.) are most probably conserved up and down the line from me to marmoset. However there is more to neuropsychology than just these basic ops.

      And yes, I do not leap to assume that just because something is true in a mouse, it must necessarily be true in anything but a mouse, if that someting is too far above the level of the most basic operation. That said, I suspect that TFA is more correct than not, and that stress does have a powerful effect on learning and development. My original post was a (sorta) humorous attempt to point out that it is waaaaaaay too easy to draw conclusions far beyond what the science actually says.

      --
      Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
    8. Re:The leap from marmoset to man by nystagman · · Score: 1

      Agreed. And we'll assume that my ability to post on /. does not necessarily meet the requirement.

      But consider that there are many ways of dealing with stress. What may be incapacitating to you may be exhilirating to someone else. And vice versa. Also, extraordinarily stressful long-term situations may well be accompanied by long-term physical deprivation, such as subsistence (or worse) nutrition which has pretty conclusively been shown to limit neurological development.

      --
      Theory and practice are the same in theory, but different in practice.
    9. Re:The leap from marmoset to man by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read the article. The researchers that were interviewed (including Dr. Gould who was pivotal in proving adult neurogenesis) have made that exact same point.

      Having said that, they are professionals who have been doing this for decades. I think they'll be able to work out just what is able to be extrapolated to humans (as they also mention in the article). When all is said and done, huge amounts of information is gleaned from animal models that is directly applicable to human beings. It is the basis of all modern biochemical research.

  3. This would explain loss of worker productivity by saskboy · · Score: 1

    Worker productivity is dependent on there being little stress in the workplace, at least stress concerning job security. As the employee becomes more stressed, they'll do whatever they can to keep their job, even if it means cutting corners. This is bad for a company overall, even though it might produce results in the short term. Healthy and happy rodents...err employees make the best workers.

    --
    Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
  4. I'm sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm sorry, I don't believe in science and all this mumbo jumbo. Do you have an alternative explanation on how maybe god does this for us on all of our brains?

  5. Inversely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems to promote my waist's ability to grow.

  6. I am guessing that by RedHatLinux · · Score: 1

    the poverty and the stress are related, because being poor is a lot more stressful than being rich. Real stress, like survival type stress.

    1. Re:I am guessing that by Pantero+Blanco · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The article actually goes into that.

      "The social implications of this research are staggering. If boring environments, stressful noises, and the primate's particular slot in the dominance hierarchy all shape the architecture of the brain--and Gould's team has shown that they do--then the playing field isn't level. Poverty and stress aren't just an idea: they are an anatomy. Some brains never even have a chance."

      Now, I don't think that poverty alone would cause the stifled neurogenesis they're talking about, but if you combine it with a lot of the other stressful things that tend to come along with poverty (crime-filled environment, fractured/broken families, poor education), that might do it.

    2. Re:I am guessing that by Ph33r+th3+g(O)at · · Score: 1

      Replying to undo "Redundant" that was supposed to be "Insightful." Sorry.

      --
      I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
    3. Re:I am guessing that by NitsujTPU · · Score: 1

      I'm pretty sure that that's what's inferred.

    4. Re:I am guessing that by swillden · · Score: 1

      Now, I don't think that poverty alone would cause the stifled neurogenesis they're talking about, but if you combine it with a lot of the other stressful things that tend to come along with poverty (crime-filled environment, fractured/broken families, poor education), that might do it.

      While interesting, this is one study where the results of animal experiments may not transfer at all well to humans. It's not unreasonable to think that humans, whose *primary* survival adaptation is the ability to think and learn may respond very differently than marmosets. In my own experience I find that "stress" (and I'm not at all certain I'm talking about the same kind of stress) tends to *increase* the rate of learning in people, at least when they recognize that learning is what they need to do in order to relieve the stress.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    5. Re:I am guessing that by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But that is *exactly* what the article is suggesting: that under survival stress, primate brains going all the way back to the marmosets concentrate their learning entirely on subjects that help them survive and *nothing* else. This explains the phenomenon of "street smarts" in poor urban human populations, where somebody who completely failed at school and is unable to read nevertheless is able to survive, but wastes all their money on alcohol, drugs, and TV.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  7. Repetitive by psycho+chic · · Score: 1

    People have linked poverty and stress for years, as well as poverty and IQ. Come on....tell me something new please.

    1. Re:Repetitive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you read the article you will find what is new. A scientific link. A link due to brain chemistry. Not some social study half connected with reality.

      Come one...make an insightful post please.

    2. Re:Repetitive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The article revealed many things to me that I did not previously know. Did you know that depression is caused by a lack of new neurons being formed? Did you know that depression can be healed by allowing new neurons to form that were being inhibited by stess? Did you know that that may be actually how drugs like Prozac work? Wow, if all this stuff is old hat to you, you must be some sort of neurogenesis expert.

    3. Re:Repetitive by BeanThere · · Score: 1

      What's new is in the details. You can't take some extremely broadly generalised summary of new information and then claim it isn't new simply because that extremely broadly generalised version is also the generalised version of something else. You might as well have said "scientists have been making studies all the time, this is just another study, what's new?"

      Sorry if it isn't that exciting to you, but real science isn't usually terribly exciting ... lots and lots of excruciating details revealed very slowly over time, little bit by little bit. If you're waiting for one single groundbreaking study that announces it's learned everything about how the human brain works then good luck, you'll wait a while.

  8. Sounds like... by bunbuntheminilop · · Score: 0

    ...an explaination to the book 'the Bell curve'.

  9. Re:Explains one thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gee, thanks - it's extremists like you that are destroying the Republican party - remember when Republicans were for less government spending?

    As for "intellectual bankruptcy" and "emotional response", check the mirror. Real conservatives respect their adversaries, even if they don't agree with them.

  10. Great to know by dtfinch · · Score: 1

    All I have to do is stop stressing out and all my stress-causing problems will go away.

    1. Re:Great to know by east+coast · · Score: 1

      All I have to do is stop stressing out and all my stress-causing problems will go away.

      Smoking the marijuana has the same effect. It's even better to older Pink Floyd albums.

      --
      Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
  11. Different kinds of stress... by benjamindees · · Score: 4, Informative

    I would say the difference is that there are kinds of stress that are self-induced, and there are kinds that are externally induced.

    Most of the people I've known who thrive on stress are dealing with stress that is completely self-induced, from lawyers to students striving for high marks. Whereas the kinds of stress that the study seems to deal with, group status, annoying sounds, uninteresting environments, are all external and, more importantly, uncontrollable by the subject. That's also the case with post-traumatic stress disorder, for example. It isn't the stress per se, but the lack of ability to influence the cause of the stress, that likely causes damage.

    Sports would be another example of self-induced stress. There is really little consequence in winning or losing, but pushing yourself can be beneficial.

    --
    "I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
  12. So, on the other hand by JanneM · · Score: 2, Funny

    So, if you're free of stress your brain will grow, on the other hand. And the more you relax, the more it grows. Your head gets heavier, which makes it all the harder to get off the couch, making you relax for even longer, creating a positive feedback loop.

    And as the skull is of fixed size, it means the brain gets denser and denser, until, in a paroxysmic cataclysm (or a cataclysmic paroxysm; the data is a bit fuzzy here), the earth is destroyed as ten million couch potatoes all have their brains collapse into black holes after a week-long Tonight Show marathon.

    Dangerous stuff, this science thing.

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
    1. Re:So, on the other hand by TheOldFart · · Score: 1

      That's just too funny! Got to love those takoyaki :) Crap... Now I will be all stressed out just thinking about it and my brain will shrink to oblivion. I wonder if there is any correlation to the White House...

    2. Re:So, on the other hand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wish there was an "unfunny" moderation tag.

  13. Obligatory by jollyplex · · Score: 1

    We must not fear; fear is the mind-killer.

    1. Re:Obligatory by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Can any of you by worrying add a moment to your lifespan? If even the smallest things are beyond your control, why are you anxious about the rest? Notice how the flowers grow. They do not toil or spin. But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of them."

  14. This might be good news... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1

    Maybe now companies will (someday...) realize that they need not to put their IT workers under tight deadlines because they'll harm their productivity.

    Our brains need rest.

    1. Re:This might be good news... by Pantero+Blanco · · Score: 1

      That's doubtful, since (from what I understand) the stress would primarily hurt them in the long term, and pushing the workers results in more short-term productivity. Most companies aren't worried about their workers being nervous wrecks at forty, as long as they manage to get New Snazazz 2006 out on time.

    2. Re:This might be good news... by sserendipity · · Score: 1

      Agreed. The obvious solution is to fire all workers after a certain number of hours on the job, and share records with other companies regarding the amount of stress that workers have been placed under, in order to keep 'unecessary elements' out of the work force.

      I'll give George and Dick a call, and we'll have a draft of the legislature on your desk by morning, Mr. Corporate Bigwig.

  15. Re:Explains one thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please don't feed the trolls (and yes, a user that structures his screenname, journal, sig, and all posts after a political viewpoint on a tech geek site is probably a troll).

  16. Re:Explains one thing by jswalter9 · · Score: 1

    Clearly, what we have here is a person utterly dedicated to sarcasm.

    --
    Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
  17. I must not stress by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stress is the mind-killer. Stress is the little death that brings total OBLITERATION. I will face my stress... I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

    1. Re: I must not stress by shawb · · Score: 1

      Not true. One must know that beer is the mindkiller.

      --
      I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
  18. MOD PARENT AWESOME by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Definitely kick ass.

  19. here goes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I for one welcome our new stress free, big headed overlords

  20. Re:Explains one thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is some truth to what the troll is saying. Look at A Little More To The Right.

  21. killer adenaline junkies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've heard several vets tell me (this is paraphrased, but it was several saying basicly the same thing) they did two tours in nam even when they could have gone home because they got addicted to the action. They said you got a thrill, a rush from it, and back in the states there wasn't any outlet for it other than crime..or be a cop.

    So I guess a lot of it is what you DO with the stress.

    We just had a story here couple weeks back about the "forgetaboutit" pill they are developing, so guys can go out and do the nasty and come back and not be stressed at all, because they forget about it, or it becomes so minimized they don't care.

    Right now there's some news articles up around the net, 1/3 of returning iraq guys need serious counseling from the stress.

  22. A mind is a terrible thing.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "[W]hat a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." - Dan Quayle

  23. Not a forgetting pill by Mprx · · Score: 2, Informative

    You're talking about propranolol, which is a non-selective beta blocker. It does NOT make you forget events, only emotions. If taken after a traumatic event you will still remember all the details of the event, but not how you felt at the time. It's not a amnesia pill.

  24. Well, I'm sorry to say.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When you're rated 2, insightful, there can't be too damn much happening.

  25. childcare implications? by chocolateeater · · Score: 1

    This seems like strong evidence against placing young babies in childcare. Gould herself documented that depriving newborn rats of their mothers for 3 hours a day permanently inhibited their brain. But yet she went back to lecturing 4 days after giving birth?

  26. As a parent... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ... I can say that such "evidence" won't matter. You have to make a choice, lose everything and live on the streets so you can be with your kids, or you get childcare. At least, that's the reality for many other parents I know. And God knows that if our business failed at this point, our kids would be in childcare as we took whatever 9 to 5s we could get to keep them clothed and fed.

    Our society(US) don't give a shit about things like scientific evidence for stress or optimal child development, or family, etc... It's not profitable. Before some knee jerk libertarian or deluded republican who thinks he's mr. free market replies, you would better yourself and your cause if you recognized the reality that our society and capitalism in general, doesn't care, because otherwise you sound like a daydreamer.

  27. Re:Examples by vertinox · · Score: 1

    Or is there a difference between positive and negative stress against the brain?

    Positive Stress:
    Shooting at something

    Negative Stress:
    Something shooting at you

    Or in the primates world...

    Positive Stress:
    Finding something to eat

    Negative Stress:
    Something finding you to eat

    --
    "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
    -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
  28. What a thunderbolt! by sudog · · Score: 1

    Poverty negatively affects the health of the poor.

    Gee, what news. I know I'm blown away.

    I mean.. really?!

  29. mod parent funny please! by Travoltus · · Score: 1

    That was hilarious!

    --
    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
  30. Cubicles and lab animals by Kim0 · · Score: 1

    Cubicled employers are similar to boxed lab animals, which had simple brains and no brain growth.

    In other words: The currently fashionable cube farms with stress make the programmers stupider.

    This just goes to verify my theory:
    The purpose of work environment is to subjugate people, not to produce.

  31. This explains quite a bit... by NateTech · · Score: 1

    ... about certain co-workers and myself, depending on what's going on. ;-)

    --
    +++OK ATH
  32. Many ramifications by sjames · · Score: 1

    I predict that this knowledge will become another elephant in the room.

    If an employee becomes depressed and has a high stress job, can it be considered an occupational disease for the purposes of compensation? Might it be treated as brain damage in the courts?

    On a similar note, this suggests a revamping of education. Surely brain damaging stress is to be avoided in any system meant to promote learning.

    Depression seems to be more common now than in the past. It could be that it's just more reported now, it could be an artifact of doctors prescribing unneeded 'happy pills', or it could be an indication that the western lifestyle (or at least workstyle) has become unhealthy and needs to be fixed.

    What happens when the lessons learned are applied to the treatment of lab animals? How many substances that have been tested didn't show detrimental neurological effects ONLY because the control animals were already suffering from subtle brain degeneration due to their environment?

    Can students in public school sue for damages if they suffer chronic boredom? Perhaps for some, school does rot the brain. Might students with poor impulse control (generally diagnosed with ADHD) be suffering from long-term effects of a boring school environment? (poor impulse control can be a symptom of diffuse brain injury).

    Most likely outcome: "I CANT HEAR YOU, LA LA LA LA LA!"