Time to worry about worrying!

In chapter eight of his book, The Ravenous Mind, Daniel Bor uses a Nobel laureate, John Nash, as an example of a person who has lost his balance on the  "seasaw of stress versus consciousness" (Bor, 2012)  Nash was driven to insanity that only plunged him deeper into his own mind.  Nash was a remarkable mathematician, professor, and a father whose level of stress probably caused him to strain his prefrontal parietal network.  With that part of his brain holding not functioning properly to hold back fear and paranoia, his amygdala took over his mind.  He saw conspiracies were there was none and basically was so anxious he was constantly in fight or flight mode.

With the increased stress of today's life, it is important that we use case studies, such as Nash's, and experimentation to further explode the effect of stress on the human brain.  For example, students now more than ever are being faced with high tuition, competition at school and in the work place, and family financial problems.  Their families are losing their health care coverage, or the amount of social networking sites is keeping them constantly on their toes, and to make it worse we've become so busy that we're sleeping less, eating unhealthier foods, and not letting out minds relax.  Whatever the stressing factors are, there are just so many of them today that our bodies are not used too.  Even after millions of years of evolution, we were not physically evolved to deal with the likes of these stresses.  Our ancestors never studied the same mathematical formulas for hours upon days like Nash did.  They weren't constantly bombarded with notifications on their phones or deadlines and due dates.

In his article, "Chronic Stress can Shrink your Brain," David Ropeik writes of how worrying too much, or stressing, can cause your brain to physically shrink.  This ties in with Bor's example that the brain can physically be altered due to the outside world causing it an emotion.  Nash's prefrontal cortex failed him from ove use and over abuse.  Ropeik writes of a study that was published in the journal Biological Psychiatry that asked participants of stressful events they've experienced, and of ongoing chronic stresses they're undergoing and then took all of their fMRIs.  The findings were shocking, but yet, still expected.  Participants who had experienced many stressful events had significantly smaller volumes in their medial prefrontal cortex.  Recent stressful events actually caused a slightly different pattern with two clusters of smaller volume at the medial prefrontal cortex and at the right insula.  Ropeik goes onto list other physical symptoms from the study, such as decreased medial prefrontal cortex, subgenual regions, and anterior cingulates from total stresses, and adding chronic stress to that, the orbitofrontal cortex was also affected.  As with Nash's worn out prefrontal cortex, all of these brain parts are associated with self-control, reasoning, judgement, and emotions.  Ropeik continues his articles with ways to reduce stress in order to avoid these mental impairments.  Our emotions can physically manifest themselves and cause greater distress in our lives.  We either need to start practicing meditation and relaxation as Ropeik, and many medical professionals suggest, or define stable lives for ourselves, which limit stress.  For example, students can turn to community college for education to reduce tuition bills, turn off their phones after a certain time, or even just go to bed an hour earlier.


Bor, D. (2012). The ravenous brain. (pp. 256-260). New York: Basic Books.
Ropeik, D. (2012). Chronic stress can shrink your brain.Psychology Today, Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-risky-is-it-really/201203/chronic-stress-can-shrink-your-brain