WASHINGTON:
Are you constantly facing the question: Why do I keep forgetting things? Where have I kept my car keys? Why am I muddled about the points in today's presentation?
When stress is a factor however, selective attention is often the first to go. Too many targets that share too many attributes with too many distracters make it difficult to figure out what is relevant from what is not. When the brain detects a stressor (a threat), this threat becomes the most relevant information for the brain to work on. So everything else that you were finding relevant is not anymore.
Even if you can easily discriminate between what is relevant and what is not, this does not mean that you will remember it! While your brain figures out what is relevant, it is doing many other things simultaneously (multi-tasking). This is not as easy at it sounds for our busy brains.
But there's a difference between how your brain processes long-term job stress, for example, and the stress of getting into a car accident. Research suggests low levels of anxiety can affect your ability to recall memories; acute or high-anxiety situations, on the other hand, can actually reinforce the learning process.
Cortisol, the hormone associated with stress, increases your brain's ability to encode and recall of traumatic events, according to studies. These memories get stored in the part of the brain responsible for survival, and serve as a warning and defense mechanism against future trauma.
But if the stress you're experiencing is ongoing, there can be devastating effects.
Neuroscientists from the University of California, Berkeley, found that chronic stress can create long-term changes in the brain. Stress increases the development of white matter, which helps send messages across the brain, but decreases the number of neurons that assist with information processing.
The neuroscientists say the resulting imbalance can affect your brain's ability to communicate with itself, and make you more vulnerable to developing a mental illness.
Defects in white matter have been associated with schizophrenia, chronic depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Research on post-traumatic stress disorder further shows that it can reduce the amount of gray matter in the brain.
The Berkeley researchers believe their findings could explain why young people who are exposed to chronic stress early in life are prone to learning difficulties, anxiety and other mood disorders.
To reduce the effects of stress, the Mayo Clinic recommends identifying and reducing stress triggers. Eating a healthy diet, exercising, getting enough sleep and participating in a stress-reduction activity such as deep breathing, massage or yoga, can also help.
Stress may harm the brain, but it recovers.
