Chronic Stress Alters Neuron Growth

New research shows that long-term daily stress actually changes the shape of neurons in the brain, helping to explain the association of prolonged stress with mental illness.

Using rats exposed to stressful conditions, scientists found that stressed rats performed just as well as unstressed rats in food-finding tasks, except that they took longer to learn new patterns. Examining the neurons from the prefrontal cortex, the area involved in memory and attention, researchers found neurons were shorter and had fewer branches in stressed rats. However, in the orbital frontal cortex, a region associated with reward processing, they found just the opposite: longer neurons with more branches.

Researchers now hope to further investigate why enhanced neuronal growth in the reward portion of the brain did not improve performance in the rats and to use these findings to better understand the relationship of stress to mental illness and addiction.

Read more:
Chronic Stress Affects Attention by Altering Neuronal Growth in the Brain

ABSTRACT: Stress-Induced Alterations in Prefrontal Cortical Dendritic Morphology Predict Selective Impairments in Perceptual Attentional Set-Shifting