Stress is contagious

Surely we have all met once in our lives people who give bad vibes for some unknown reason and as soon as we come across these people the first thing we want is run away 😓

Neuroscience is beginning to offer explanations for that circumstance that until now was a true mystery. Scientists at the Canadian University of Calgary have proven in mice that those who suffer stress or anxiety are able to spread their mood to others.

The experiment consisted in supplying a mouse with a shock on a leg (the scientists clarified that they didn't cause harm to the animal, but they managed to make the poor mouse very nervous...), then looked through the scanner what was happening in his brain.

A change was observed in the brain networks that is typical of those who suffer a situation of intense anxiety and is preparing for a future attack. Then they released this frightened mouse in a place in which there was another mouse that was quiet, a few minutes later they scanned this second mouse and saw that their brain networks had become exactly the same as those of the stressed mouse .

They took this second mouse and put it in a box in which there was a third mouse and the same thing happened (😱 poor animals 😱), it infected the fear and it modified the brain. It was verified in this way that the stress is contagious and also reached the additional conclusion that the source of the contagion was the odor generated by the gland located in the anus of the stressed animal, which released pheromones: chemical messengers capable of inducing a change of behavior in other animals.

In humans, similar experiments have been made, hiding in a room shirts soaked in the paratroopers' sweat. People in the room weren't aware of the smell but it was immediately proven that it increased their heart rate and blood pressure.

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