STRESS

Curious about my own inability to focus on task outside of my primary interest i.e. subjects that do not involve some sort of art practice, I wondered how the level of stress I am under had an affect on my attention. It wasn’t like I was not interested in other things besides the making of art; it was more like I had a block that seemed to make focusing and retaining new information unbelievably difficult. I felt as if the reasons for my stress lie only in my emotions, which is partly true, but found its affects to lie more deeply in the amount and duration of the stress. Stress is something that everyone goes through but large amounts of stress can have damaging physical and psychological effects on a person.

Something that stress, emotion, and memory have in common is the area in the brain that processes that information, most notably the hippocampus which is located within the brains limbic system. The hippocampus has a lot to do with learning and memory as well the processing of the stress hormone cortisol, which helps to mobilize fuel, cue attention and memory, and prepare the body and brain to battle challenges to equilibrium. The hippocampus has also shown to be a critical component in the biology of stress and mood since it contains a vast number of cortisol receptors and is the first in regulating the feedback loop of the fight-or-flight response, which is registered in the amygdala.

Stress comes in both good and bad form: the good stress is the everyday stress, the stress that comes in short periods of time and is actually beneficial to the brains health and aids in the learning process. The bad stress on the other hand is when the stress becomes an overload; heavy workloads, family issues, financial issues, whatever. After so long it can start to take its toll. An overload in stress causes an unhealthy does of cortisol to be released into the hippocampus and can start to alter the brains chemistry to shift towards anxiety and/or depression. In a worst case scenario according to John J. Ratey, M.D. in his book Spark, mild stress can become chronic; the unrelenting cascade of cortisol triggers genetic actions that begin to sever synaptic connections and cause dendrites to atrophy and cells to die; eventually, the hippocampus can end up physically shriveled, like a raisin. And if there are not adequate cortisol receptors at the time memories are being formed the learning process is less efficient. The hippocampus is the key in coordinating memory storage, in both short-term memory and in the recall of relatively recent long-term memories.

Around the board the stress experts say the management of stress is a fairly easy thing to do, as im sure we all have heard by this point in time, EXERCISE is the key to reducing stress, studies have also pointed that exercise can reduce the affects of anxiety and depression as well help repair a damaged hippocampus, because exercise is one of those good stressor that the brain needs. But like everything, that is a lot easier said then done. In my experiences I have felt the benefits that exercise, and even nutrition can have on the reduction of stress, but the world I live in is also loaded with the pressure of deadlines and leaves no room for unexpected stressors, let alone enough time to add in an exercise routine.

http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2008/02/05/stress-and-neural-wreckage-part-of-the-brain-plasticity-puzzle