New Study Gives Light On the Brain Network That Deals With Stress Response

Anxiety-ridden and disconcerting images were used by Yale researchers in a recent study that might help a person's stress response when dealing with high-pressure situations.

Elizabeth Goldfarb, Ph.D. and her colleagues' research revealed the connections between the hippocampus and the brain scans of individuals who were exposed to images such as filthy toilets, snarling dogs, and mutilated faces, as mentioned in the journal, Nature.

These findings convinced the researchers that they found the "neuronal home" of the brain, which is behind stressful feelings. Past studies have been made on the physiological mechanisms on the stress response, but what's hard for the researchers to pinpoint is the actual location of the sensation of stress.

Additionally, all research subjects were given a questionnaire that dealt with how the presented images made them feel. Having a more personalized account of what they've felt during the study gave surprising data, unlike previous studies, which concentrated on animals. Goldfarb admitted that "we can't ask rats how they are feeling".

With this in mind, the team is now hopeful that what they have in their hands will be a springboard for alternative solutions in dealing with patients who easily suffer from anxiety and stress.

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The Study

Goldfarb and his co-researchers presided a series of fMRI brain scans in a group of 60 healthy people who were exposed to supposedly troubling images. They were then asked to assess the stress that they've felt as they set eyes on them. 

Given these points, the researchers managed to unveil a network of neural connections originating from the hippocampus to the hypothalamus. The hippocampus is found in the temporal lobe, and it helps control emotion, learning, memory, and motivation. So if you think more about stress, then the brain will preserve such a memory along with all the emotional baggage attached to it as future information. 

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With this in mind, it's a known fact that the hypothalamus is responsible for the production of steroid hormones. They then found that the neural connections from the hippocampus to the hypothalamus became more active if the subject was most stressed. 

Will This Study Benefit a Person's Stress Response?

Meanwhile, the participants recorded data lower levels of stress sensations when the neural connections for the hippocampus and the frontal cortex were strongest. In other words, what they've found could help previous studies regarding the frontal cortex, which has generated results showing that anxiety-ridded individuals don't have any control when it comes to their emotions. 

For Dr. Rajita Sinha, a coauthor of the study, she considers these findings to benefit not just one target, as mentioned in Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Learning Network. They will be able to fashion therapeutic interventions like boosting the hippocampus reciprocity to the frontal cortex or lower down the indicators that trigger the stress response on an individual.

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