Nov 7, 2011 0
The Neurobiology of Stress: The Stress Response Explained
(Editor’s note: below you have part 4 of the 6-part The Neurobiology of Stress series. If you are joining the series now, you can read the previous part Here.)
Stayin’ Alive
THE STRESS RESPONSE EXPLAINED
Stress was put on the map, so to speak, by a Hungarian — born Canadian endocrinologist named Hans Hugo Bruno Selye (ZEL — yeh) in 1950, when he presented his research on rats at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. To explain the impact of stress, Selye proposed something he called the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS), which he said had three components. According to Selye, when an organism experiences some novel or threatening stimulus it responds with an alarm reaction. This is followed by what Selye referred to as the recovery or resistance stage, a period of time during which the brain repairs itself and stores the energy it will need to deal with the next stressful event.