Here is the article about stress for the week of Septemer 26. This is an article by one of the most famous stress and psychology researchers, Robert Sapolsky. It's mainly about how stress--a psychological variable--impacts our brain, an undeniably physical part of ourselves. You'll hear more from Dr. Sapolsky in a video we'll watch in class on how important social relationships are to our experience of stress and its impact on our bodies.
In the mean time, have a good week! And don't get too stressed about the beginning of the semester! And don't forget to post your blog entry about stress by Midnight on Sunday, September 25.
I thought that this article was very interesting. You see instances like this in the media all the time. Shows like Law and Order: SVU, use situations of rape and trauma for every episode. Victims sometimes never recover. Recently, I watched a movie called Brothers where a man comes back from the war, and he is completely changed. He's traumatized by what he's seen and he can't seem to go back to normal. I would guess that he probably had PTSD. Although these are all "fictional" shows, there's still relevance to real life situations. There's a part in the article where it mentions that researchers aren't sure whether PTSD causes a smaller hippocampus or whether it's the reverse. It's like correlation versus causation. Did one cause the other or was there a third variable involved? The last paragraph really hit home to me. As a 7th grader, I visited the Holocaust museum. I specifically remember the pile of shoes, and seeing what they had there is indescribable. I've always known that the Holocaust was bad, and even though I wasn't at the actual Holocaust, just being at that museum made it seem so much more real. In addition, I traveled to Baja, Mexico for a mission trip three years ago. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I've seen pictures and commercials of people in that much poverty, but until you've been there first hand, it doesn't even compare. It changed the way I thought about a lot of things in my life.
I found the article to be quite unsettling. For a disease as prevalent as PTSD scientists are not as informed as I wish they could be. The author did a great job being informative, however the illuminations of how little we actually know about PTSD and how to treat it made me quite uncomfortable. Two years ago I became very close to someone who suffered from PTSD and the episodes she goes through are nothing short of horrendous. She is currently in therapy and also on medication to ease her symptoms, something that made me feel hopeful about her condition until the bottom of page two... I do not like the idea of patients being treated with glucocorticoids that can cause memory problems and damage the hippocampus.
I am very intrigued by the idea that those who suffer from PTSD could have already had a smaller hippocampus to begin with. Perhaps, as mentioned in the article, screenings of those who could be deployed into a hostile environment would be helpful in avoiding such serious mental disease. It also brings up the question of how genetically predetermined the hippocampus is. Is the size something that could be altered by childhood upbringing? Do small bouts of stress as a child affect the hippocampus' growth?
I shared a similar reaction with hans4339 in regards to the final paragraph. I also visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum where a pile of shoes belonging to people I had never met brought tears to my eyes and a wave of nausea to my stomach. This sort of physical reaction goes to show just how powerful and complex the human brain is, how consequential human violence can be to our sanity. On a lighter note, the mention of pulling all nighters also resonated deeply with me. Earlier in high school I was notorious for the all night stress fest and was always bewildered when fellow classmates who went to bed without cramming ended up doing just as well on tests. Hopefully I keep that habit at bay here in college!