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Stress and the Brain

One of the recent - and very silly myths - to die is that the brain is a fixed piece of meat: Your moronic teachers no doubt told you not to "kill brain cells."  Instead, the brain is flexible - neuroplasticity is the buzzword, and The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force is a good start on the subject.  While this means one can enhance cognition, it also means that stress can damage your brain.  The Times has this article:  Reporting earlier this summer in the journal Science, Nuno Sousa of the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute at the University of Minho in Portugal and his colleagues described experiments in which chronically stressed rats lost their elastic rat cunning and instead fell back on familiar routines and rote responses, like compulsively pressing a bar for food pellets they had no intention of eating...continue to full post

Full post as published by Crime & Federalism on August 18, 2009 (boomark / email).