How chronic stress warps decision-making
Nerve-cell ‘highways’ identified in mice suggest that stress pushes the brain towards rigid habit and away from thoughtful choices. Scientists have found two ‘dials’ in the brain that help to explain how chronic stress hijacks decision-making 1 . The discovery is based on experiments in mice and will therefore need to be confirmed in humans. But it shows that prolonged stress dials back deliberate decision-making while also boosting an ‘autopilot’ mode in the brain that favours rigid, habitual behaviours. It’s long been known that humans who face chronic stress are prone to resort to a habit, such as smoking a cigarette or eating junk food, rather than make a well-thought-out decision. The work, reported today in Nature , uncovers a biological mechanism for how stress puts its finger on the scale in favour of routine, scientists say. “It’s really a major achievement,” says Kyle Smith, a neuroscientist at Dartmouth University in Hanover, New Hampsh...
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