(48) Cool paper and notes

This is an abstract from a paper written by Giulio Perrotta titled:

"Maladaptive stress: Theoretical, neurobiological and clinical profiles"

Abstract Stress is an adaptive response of the organism to an event that can be both internal and external, interfering at the endocrine, humoral, organic and biological levels: If the person reacts with all his resources, in a constructive and functional way, then we speak of "eustress", responding in an adaptive and functional way; if, on the other hand, the person fails to draw on his strategies, then we speak of "distress", giving rise to a more or less pervasive and serious form of maladaptation, which if reinforced with specific conditioning could give rise to one or more psychopathologies. It is therefore important to intervene on the person, according to a precise therapeutic plan, and on his mental and personality patterns, in order to remodel certain learned models that reinforce maladaptation and to support and assist the person in his process of awareness towards the invalidating and/or dysfunctional condition.

Perrin's notes

This paper lacks explaining how stress and trauma atrophies the frontal cortex. This is important because it is the higher conscious area's that send (i.e., determine threat or not) signals to the hypothalamus based on incoming stimulus. The frontal cortex also regulates signals from the hypothalamus to the amygdala of conditioned fear to regulate stress response through an objective lens. The amygdala detects fear and sends signals as well and can become over conditioned and overactive when the frontal cortex is functioning less than optimally. Frontal regulation is critical as a tool to remain rational from conditioned fears already stored in memory center, especially in relation to controlling stress in the perceiving and interpreting of incoming stimulus. The higher conscious areas of the cortex prevent generalizing by the use of discriminating one's own thoughts based on how incoming stimuli affects them. Trouble is one form of maladaptive stress is when the frontal cortex becomes inhibited sometimes to the point of becoming completely disconnected, this condition results in a person becomes less apt to controlling an emotional response and/or their behaviors.

Stress and behaviors therefore become less controlled, and without a sense of control anxiety and fears can become overwhelming. This can be a problem for someone that is in a neurotic state, because negative thoughts lead to negative emotions such as apathy which can stem from burnout. In the state of apathy one may become addicted to the emotion of anger which is manifested through rage. Often by this point a person has adapted to unhealthy coping mechanisms (i.e., displaced aggression) and in a less than optimal emotional state such as apathy an individual is highly susceptible to becoming addicted to the emotion of disgust as well. This escalates to a host of problems that may lead to cognitive bias presupposing an individual to mistaking others through the lens of stimulus generalization. The effect of an exacerbated case of disgust is that at a deeper level leading to moral disgust, which is activated through the body brain connection to incoming moral stimuli activated viscerally (i.e., sick to stomach) via signals from the brain region of the insula cortex.