Why Stress Affects Intelligence

Mental Focus, Stress and the Incredible Shrinking Brain

This post will explain how stress affects your brain and decreases intelligence.

Let’s Start At The Beginning

You see, stress is a part of life. Drive your car - and when a car cuts you off - you feel stress. Get a new assignment that’s due in a few hours - stress. Make a presentation - stress. Talk to a pretty girl - lots of stress.

Life contains stress. Even if you ran away to a remote island to live in a grass hut you would likely feel stress. Remember Tom Hanks in “Castaway”. Every scene is filled with his next stressful challenge – catching fish for dinner, building a hut, coping with his boredom by talking to the volleyball. Look at the hippie communes of the sixties. Supposedly, each member lived together with love and peace and without stress. It didn’t last. Pettiness, selfishness and disillusionment followed; all causes of intense stress.

Fact: We all face stress in some form or another everyday of our lives.

So…some stress in your life is normal. The next obvious question to answer is: what about lots of stress? What does that do to a person?Lots of stress puts people into panic. We’re talking fight or flight for men and friend or befriend for women. Lots of stress bathes your brain in all kinds of naturally occurring chemicals – cortisol, dopamine, endorphins, and more. Why does this happen? Because…to overcome a stressful situation you need to make quick decisions. When you’re running away from an angry bear or preparing to battle the oncoming hordes of enemy fighters you don’t want to spend too long thinking things through. It’s not about logic. It’s about right brained action. We can’t escape thousands of years of evolutionary programming. For this reason, a screaming client sets off the same stresses as an angry bear. (Please note: that there are different levels of stress. In another post I will discuss how psychologists define these levels.)

Long Term Affect of Stress

Over an extended period of time some of these naturally occurring chemicals can have a neurotoxic affect on the hippocampus. Basically, some of these chemicals (including cortisol, which I know you’ve heard of) eat away at the neurons surrounding the hippocampus. This doesn’t mean that a few upsetting days will hurt you. It does mean that over an extended period of time that the brain will start to decay from long term stress. The hippocampus literally shrinks and as a result your brain capacity shrinks. The hippocampus is critical to the processing of memories.

More Than The Hippocampus Is Affected By Stress

The corpus callosum is also affected. The corpos callusm connects your left brain with your right brain. A recent study of children with PTSD looked at the size of the corpus callosum. Turns out that a child with PTSD - a child living with an emotionally abusive parent, a child who doesn’t get the love they need, a homeless child - is likely to have a smaller corpus callosum. The stress and cortisol shrink their corpus callosum. Other studies on adults with PTSD have found similar shrinkage of the corpus callosum.

Does The Size Of Your Corpus Callosum Matter?

A recent study unequivocally confirmed that the size of a persons’ corpus callosum is directly related to intelligence. The study left no doubt. Long term stress makes you dumber. If you have to face stress over many years and you can’t cope or process these stressful emotions, you won’t be as smart. It’s that simple.

Long Term Memories

Long term memories are stored throughout your brain - in the left hemisphere and in the right hemisphere. Using a pencil as an example, in one place you know how to spell pencil. In another place you know how to use it. In another spot of your brain you recognize the shape. Somewhere else you recall that a pencil is made from wood and graphite. If stress has reduced the size of your corpus callosum you might temporarily forget how to spell pencil, but still be able to use it just fine.

Why Focus Stones Helps You Think More Clearly

Focus Stones helps increase the communication between your left hemisphere and your right hemisphere. Focus Stones help you use your corpus callosum more efficiently. Focus Stones help you to be more intelligent.

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