Alcoholics have 'blunted' responses to psychological stressors such as publi...( research to delineate the extent to whi...),Health

"The significance of this finding comes in part from understanding how and why a normal person has a stress response to a social event," said Lovallo. "Psychological stressors are usually events in our environment that have no ability to hurt us directly, in the way that cold, hunger, or a predator can hurt us. So, why do we react as if we were in real danger when we are only giving a talk to an audience, and a fake audience at that? We process these kinds of events in our frontal cortex, the part of the brain that allows us to imagine things and to project ourselves into the future. This brain region has extensive connections with our limbic system, the primitive brain areas responsible for emotions and stress responses. The frontal-limbic connections are how we generate a threat response to such things as embarrassment if we fail to speak well before an audience. Such events are only meaningful to us because we are social beings that value the esteem of our peers. However, if these frontal-limbic connections are disturbed, then we may either fail to psychologically comprehend a potential threat when we encounter it, or we may fail to respond even if we recognize the threat. Our results suggest that some aspect of this frontal-limbic connection has been altered in patients recovering from severe alcohol dependence, which has implications for their social functioning and comprehension."

'"/>


17-Jun-2002