Psychophysiology of Stress You Should Know by Peter David

Stress is a feature of our everyday lives. Though observed very commonly, it has numerous psycho physiological aspects. Though it sounds scary, what we need to understand is that the brain is the true origin of stress. In order to have a reaction on the emotional or physical level, the brain must process the happening sin the surroundings and must initiate a perception and appraisal system. The senses of our body provide the necessary inputs for this perception system.

The stressors could be biological, psychological, sociological or philosophical in context and thus require a cognitive process to be recorded by the brain. The scary part of the scenario is that the brain need not be provided with ' real' stressors; either of the sensory organs can even perceive stress and communicate as such to the brain. Thus, stress cannot have a definite form since the brain of each person works uniquely and differently. It may not even be possible to uniquely attach stress to a particular event, since what may be perceived as a stressor by any one individual may not be a potential stressor for someone else.

To demonstrate this, researchers chose a class of students as a test group and asked all the students to close their eyes and sit in peace. After a calm settled on the surroundings, one of the researchers slammed a big, book and screamed. Although the initial reaction of most students was to be jerked back to reality, what amazed the conductors was the difference in the reactions showed by each student. The act of slamming a book and screaming was provided as an input by the ears to the brain and the brain processed it at lightening speed.

An immediate outcome of this processing was that the heartbeats fastened and the muscles tightened; a body's typical way of reacting to fear. Some of the students reacted by screaming while others were simply startled. Thus, the brain reacted to a source of stress, which was conspicuous by being absent. After the initial ho-hum humdrum was over, the researchers asked the students to maintain peace in the room and again close the eyes. Although the students obliged, most of them showed some signs of apprehension and fear at being disturbed again!

Thus, they could actually create conditions of stress by the sheer power of thinking and imagination. What struck the scientists was that the manner in which each student reacted was different; some screamed loud, some were simply rudely shocked out of a sense of peace. Thus, stress cannot be uniformly defined; it is a unique to each person. Further, the time of recovery of each student was different. Some students showed an increased anticipation of something unexpected, while the others recovered back to their original state. The researchers concluded that stress is affected by a person's psychological as well as physiological make up.