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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."
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.
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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"
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.