Stress Inhibits Brain's Ability to Grow

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."

Comments

So, on the other hand

[JanneM]

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.

Re:The leap from marmoset to man

[Clover_Kicker]

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

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.