“Escape the confines of STRESS!”
So many of us live with prolonged stress, whether from pressures at work and/or home.
Nevertheless, decisions that affect our future or that of others must be made,
even while we are experiencing chronic stress.
A study by researchers in Portugal published in the July 2012 issue of Translational Psychiatry demonstrates
“reduced ability to shift from habitual strategies to goal-directed behaviors…
even when the right choice would be to go a different way.”
Stressed individuals also displayed a reorganization of neuronal circuits,
an atrophy of the pathway between the cortex and the striatum.
Fortunately, both the structural reorganization and
“reduced ability to shift to goal-directed behaviors”
was reversed after 6 – 7 weeks of reduced stress.
Listen to this week’s Jolt of Joan
