Kids Let Us Look at How Stress Renders Individuals VULNERABLE to Maladaptive THREAT

It is common to think that in a potentially dangerous condition, stress gives us powers of "superheroes": attention to the stars, overwhelming senses, every nerve tense and ready to shoot. This is not always the case.

According to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , stress diminishes our ability to predict and perceive new dangerous stimuli. In essence, it makes us less flexible to understand the new forms that a threat could take - a situation, this rather risky.

"When we are under stress, we pay less attention to changes in the environment, exposing us to increased risk just because we do not know the new sources of danger," says Candace Raio, New York University researcher and first author of the study.

READY FOR EVERYTHING

Learning to predict the dangers - for example, the sudden arrival of a car behind a curve - is vital to survival. But it is also "elastic" enough to accept the new shapes that those dangers could take: from behind the curve could get a skateboard out of control, and we should avoid it anyway.

FIRST COME BACK

The researchers submitted some volunteers to a conditioning test, in which some selected images in a series of photos were associated with a small electric discharge on the wrist. Those images were therefore a sign of danger, while others were considered "safe".

The following day, half of the participants were subjected to a procedure to induce stress in the lab: the poor people had to leave for a few minutes an arm in icy water - a "torture" that increases the levels of some stress hormones , such as cortisol and alpha amylase.

LEFT BEHIND

At this point, the test was repeated, but the stimuli were mutated: the first "safe" images were associated with a shock, and the "dangerous" ones became innocuous. Stressed participants were less likely to react to new dangers, before which they showed a lower physiological response: as if they had not fully recorded that dangerous stimuli had changed.

In particular, stress seemed to affect learning abilities, interfering with the ability to update the signal-to-danger association.

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