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

What about other people?

[Kawahee]

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?

Re:What about other people?

[happyemoticon]

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.

Re:What about other people?

[dr.badass]

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.

Re:What about other people?

[drmike0099]

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!).

Re:The leap from marmoset to man

[TeacherOfHeroes]

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?