Word: stress
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...that's the case, it may help explain the recurring nightmares that characterize psychiatric conditions like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Walker says. "The brain has not stripped away the emotional rind from that experience memory," he says, so "the next night, the brain offers this up, and it fails again, and it starts to sound like a broken record ... What you hear [PTSD] patients describing is, 'I can't get over the event...
...biological level, Walker explains, the "emotional rind" translates to sympathetic nervous-system activity during sleep: faster heart rate and the release of stress chemicals. Understanding why nightmares recur and how REM sleep facilitates emotional processing - or hinders it, when nightmares take place and perpetuate the physical stress symptoms - may eventually provide clues to effective treatments of painful mental disorders. Perhaps, even, by simply addressing sleeping habits, doctors could potentially interrupt the emotional cycle that can lead to suicide. "There is an opportunity for prevention," Bernert says...
Knox's measured explanation of her sometimes bizarre behavior in the hours and days after the murder certainly helped her defense. What the press called "cartwheels" in the police station during questioning, she explained as stress-reducing yoga; she said photographs of her making out with Sollecito in the yard outside the cottage as police inspected the murder scene simply reflected her state of "shock" and his efforts to console her with "cuddling." (Read a story about the Italian media's obsession with the Knox case...
When the researchers scored the results, it came as no surprise that volunteers' fatigue and stress rose steadily as the test got longer. What was unexpected was their corresponding performance: as the length of the test increased, so did the students' scores. The average score on the three-and-a-half hour test was 1,209 out of 1,600. On the four-and-a-half-hour version it was 1,222; on the five-and-a-half-hour test it was 1,237. Virtually all of the students followed that pattern...
...scores marched higher all the same. What the researchers believe explains the improvement is fatigue - or more precisely, what the fatigue represents. A feeling of exhaustion is often a stand-in for anxiety. Most students - particularly comparatively high achievers who have already gotten into college - learn to use the stress that accompanies a test as a prod to action and concentration. The experts call the phenomenon "achievement motivation," or a kind of competitive energy spurt...