Question

According to Madhumita Murgia Winch about how stress affects your brain 750 to 1000 words with references and in text citations. .

Answer 1

Madhumita Murgia is a known editor, journalist and a speaker who is high proficient in the various areas such as health, technology and science. Through the platform of TED-Ed she attempted to explain how stress affects the brain. She stated that stress is part of everyday life and everybody experiences it. Being restless, irritable, inability to sleep, failure to remember things, having a sense of isolation are all the symptoms of stress. According to her stress is not always unhealthy as it helps in boosting energy levels and increases focus. But when it becomes persistent and continuous part of daily living, it tends to start changing the brain structure.  

Murgia believed that when stress becomes chronic such have having frequent arguments or overstressing about work, it begins to change the brain size and its structure. This results in causing impairment in functioning of various parts of the brain. She stated that when an individual encounters a stressful situation, the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis (HPA axis) gets activated and starts the production of cortisol hormone. High levels of cortisol in the body for a long duration of time cause severe damage to the brain.

Persistent stress results in an increase in the level of activity of the neural connections in the amygdala (part of the brain that is associated with the regulation of emotions). Whereas an increase in the cortisol levels decreases the electric signals in the hippocampus (part of the brain that controls the function of learning, memory and stress). This also results in inhibition of the functioning of HPA axis by the hippocampus and when it does not work effectively, individual's ability to manage and control stress reduces.

It is also believed that high amount of cortisol can shrink the size of the brain and causes loss of synaptic association between the neurons. This further results in reducing the size of prefrontal cortex (area of brain that balances various actions such as social interaction, judgment, decision-making ability and concentration levels). Chronic stress causes impairment in learning and memory processes and is associated with causing serious mental health issues such as depression , anxiety as well as Alzheimer's disease. Stress might also pass down into brain's DNA and is further transmitted from mother to the newborn baby which determines how the child would react to stress and make them sensitive to stressful event in their later life.