Stressed?

January 11th, 2025| Topic: Uncategorized | 0

Stress! That’s what we don’t need at all. It is hazardous. Besides the waste of adrenaline, the rise of blood pressure, the agony of emotions, etc., it turns out that stress also affects your memory!

So claimed researchers from Toronto, Amsterdam, and Seattle, in “Stress Disrupts Engram Ensembles in Lateral Amygdala to Generalize Threat Memory in Mice,” published in Cell.

[An engram, BTW, is a unit of cognitive information that is imprinted in a physical substance—parts of the brain? selective neurons?—supposedly the means by which memories are stored: a physical imprint of memory.]

By studying the brains of mice, these scientists found that stress causes the release of endocannabinoids—endogenous cannabis-like chemicals that normally help us form specific, contextual memories. But in high amounts they disrupt memory-forming neurons, leading to the formation of overly large, generalized memory engrams. That is to say, a stressful experience doesn’t just get stored as one distinct memory of that specific painful event. Instead, it triggers a cascade of related memories, causing people to react fearfully to all sorts of otherwise harmless and non-specific triggers—aversive memory overgeneralization.

Sheena Josselyn, one of the authors:

When stress induces the release of too many endocannabinoids, more generalized aversive fearful memories to form.”

And, crucially, the study thereby found a potential solution. By blocking the endocannabinoid receptors on those susceptible neurons, they were able to limit the stress-induced expansion of memory engrams in mice.

Dr. Josselyn:

We know that people with PTSD show fearful responses to safe situations or environments, and have found a way to limit this fearful response to specific situations and potentially reduce the harmful effects of PTSD.”

Of course, this research was conducted in mice, not humans, but still …

And yet, there is an even better way to deregulate stress.

Yahweh, how many my adversaries have become.
Many [are] rising against me.
Many [are] saying about my soul,
“There is no deliverance for him in God.”
Psalm 3:1–2

“Yahweh” begins 3:1, and “me” ends it; thus we have the psalmist seemingly separated from God by “adversaries” that shows up on the middle of the verse. However, 3:3 begins by counteracting this distancing with “but You, Yahweh” juxtaposed to “about me” as a “shield.”

But You, Yahweh, [are] a shield about me,
my glory, and the One who lifts my head.
Psalm 3:3

No longer is the supplicant separated from deity by enemies, for God is a protective barrier, a “shield.”

With my voice, to Yahweh I called out,
and He answered me from His holy mountain.
I—I lay down and I slept;
I awoke, for Yahweh—He sustains me.
I will not be afraid of ten thousand people
who have set [themselves] against me all around.
Psalm 3:4–6

In the “story” of the psalm, the psalmist and his cohort are a minority while the opponents are “many,” “many,” “many” (3:1–2), reaching a crescendo later with “all my enemies” (3:7c)—“adversaries” who contemptuously scorn the psalmist (3:2).

But these enemies don’t stand a chance (3:7):

Arise, Yahweh; deliver me, my God.
For You have smitten all my enemies on the jaw;
the teeth of the wicked You have shattered.
Psalm 3:7

It’s a bit tough make utterances with broken teeth and curdling blook in one’s mouth. I.e., they who had insulted the psalmist and his God, casting aspersions on the faith of the former and the faithfulness of the latter (3:2) have been now rendered speechless. And so …

To Yahweh [belongs] deliverance;
upon Your people [is] Your blessing.
Psalm 3:8

SOURCE: Study Finds; Cell