Growing up, kids are tought the difference between concrete and abstract. ‘Anger’, ‘love’, ‘happiness’, ’stress’ are abstract things because you can not touch them. Snow, paper, leather, and copper are concrete things, because you can touch them.

Modern Neuroscience, however, now suggests a physical, touchable location for ’stress’: the right prefrontal coretex of the brain. And chances are, if you had access to a top-of-the-line MRI, you’d be able to see it also.

Interestingly, the same study that figured out the location of stress in the brain also shows that stress is sticky. In other words, the part of the brain that’s activated by stress stays active long after the stressful situation is over.

So for those who cavalierly disregard stress as something abstract and not ‘real’, this might convince you otherwise to pay attention to scientists when they say chronic stress is really bad for your brain and body.

In the coming weeks, I’ll try to post some of the more eye-opening effects stress has on brain power and memory.

Update: For those looking to improve memory, here’s the above mentioned post on stress as a brain buster

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