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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."
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?
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
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.
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"
> There is a bit more happening in my brain than in a marmoset's.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.