Being stressed reduces our abilities to predict new dangers that we might face, a study has found. The research counters the conventional view that stress enhances our ability to detect and adjust to these changing sources of threat.<\/p>\n
\u201cStress does not always increase perceptions of danger in the environment, as is often assumed,\u201d said Candace Raio, a postdoctoral researcher at New York University.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, our study shows that when we are under stress, we pay less attention to changes in the environment, potentially putting us at increased risk for ignoring new sources of threat,\u201d said Raio, lead author of the study published in the journal PNAS.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a result, stress can reduce the flexibility of our responses to threats by impairing how well we track and update predictions of potentially dangerous circumstances,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Although learning to predict threats in our environment is critical to survival, it is equally important to be flexible in order to control these responses when new sources of threat change. For instance, from an oncoming car to an out-of-control skateboarder.<\/p>\n
To test our ability to learn to flexibly update threat responses under stressful conditions, the researchers conducted a series of experiments that centered on \u201cPavlovian threat- conditioning.\u201d
\nHere, the subjects viewed images on a computer screen. The appearance of some images were coupled with a mild, electric wrist-shock, serving as a \u201cthreat cue,\u201d while other images were never paired with a shock (\u201csafe cue\u201d).<\/p>\n
A day later, half of the participants underwent a laboratory procedure designed to induce stress – this \u201cstress group\u201d placed their arm in an ice-water bath for a few minutes, which elevated two known stress hormones (alpha- amylase and cortisol).<\/p>\n
Later, all of the study\u2019s subjects repeated the threat-conditioning procedure. However, this time the cue outcomes switched: the earlier threatening cue no longer predicted shock, but the formerly safe cue did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Being stressed reduces our abilities to predict new dangers that we might face, a study has found. The research counters the conventional view that stress enhances our ability to detect and adjust to these changing sources of threat. \u201cStress does not always increase perceptions of danger in the environment, as is often assumed,\u201d said Candace […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6740,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738\/revisions\/6740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}