The entrance exam to medical school consists of a five-hour fusillade of hundreds of questions that, even with the best preparation, often leaves the test taker discombobulated and anxious. For some would-be physicians, the relentless pressure causes their reasoning abilities to slow and even shut down entirely. The experience—known variously as choking, brain freeze, nerves, jitters, folding, blanking out, the yips or a dozen other descriptive terms—is all too familiar to virtually anyone who has flubbed a speech, bumped up against writer’s block or struggled through a lengthy exam.

For decades scientists thought they understood what happens in the brain during testing or a battlefront firefight. In recent years a different line of research has put the physiology of stress in an entirely new perspective. The response to stress is not just a primal reaction affecting parts of the brain that are common to a wide array of species ranging from salamanders to humans. Stress, in fact, can cripple our most advanced mental faculties, the areas of the brain most developed in primates.

8 Comments

1. 1. Bruce Voigt 06:13 AM 3/25/12

   Mike the Headless Chicken -
   Mike the Headless Chicken (April 1945 – March 1947) was a Wyandotte rooster that lived for 18 months after its head had been cut off. …
   ———-
   To reason with anything, one must first know the true reason!
   
   At its poles, a cell of anything contains the complete make up of the entity that produced that cell. The brain is new to evolution having it's cells with four nuclei orbits producing eight poles instead of three orbits that produce the hexagon of life (us and the tree).
   
   A plant within it's make up will contain a gaggle of instinct cells. I have not discovered where yet but I have discovered that they hang out at the base of a brain and spinal cord.
   
   We being the evolution of a plant or tree and having our bodies evolve with this separate and new species (brain) for reasons assume the brain runs our body. WELL IT DOES NOT
   
   In removing the nail from the shoe of Anthropology I would suggest that if they are serious in discovering the origin of man that some effort is put forth in finding out from which tree, plant or bush we came!
   
   There is a fish that survives not of nutrition as we know it but by light alone (photosynthesis) and they do not produce excrement!
   

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2. 2. Bruce Voigt 01:13 AM 4/3/12

   quote:There is a fish that survives not of nutrition as we know it but by light alone (photosynthesis) and they do not produce excrement!
   ---------------
   or it may be that they do
   http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/01/23/forests-are-dying-in-the-american-west-and-global-warming-is-likely-to-blame/
   
   Discovering blobs of chlorophyll in my hydroponic experiments, it for quite some time was a mystery to how this chlorophyll moved out of the plant. I was even setting the alarm clock to check if it moved in the dark.
   
   This mystery was solved when I discovered that fluid, elixir or sap moves through out the tree as a gas and this gas distributed to the roots left as a gas which then turned to the liquid green acid called chlorophyll.
   
   

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3. 3. lamorpa in reply to Bruce Voigt 11:31 AM 4/9/12

   Bruce Voigt wrote: "The brain is new to evolution having it's cells with four nuclei orbits producing eight poles instead of three orbits that produce the hexagon of life (us and the tree)."
   
   This is hysterical. This type of 'energy' nonsense is truly comical. Thanks. You do realize you are posting a comment on Scientific American, where more than 95% of the readers know this type of pseudo-scientific blibber-blabber is perfectly obvious, don't you?

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4. 4. GG in reply to lamorpa 07:53 PM 4/9/12

   dear lamorpa, you do realize that Bruce Voigt is a "chatter bot", a soft-AI program that puts phrases together...(alternatively, "Bruce Voigt" is a real person, but completely insane)

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5. 5. thomsonr in reply to GG 08:30 PM 4/9/12

   Interesting, I was thinking Schizophrenia.

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6. 6. Padgie 09:04 PM 4/9/12

   Stress causing a decrease in reasoning power is one thing, when the feedback assosciated with this is remains positive it does lead to a lockup. Which is if you think about it why training and practice till things are automatic reduces the effect and the chance of this occurring. It is not helped also by the stresses building more readily than they dissipate. The trick in dealing with this is to be able to focus on what is important and discard the rest. Often difficult to do especially under trying circumstances.

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7. 7. Michael M 06:11 PM 4/10/12

   Voight also wrote "it's", the contraction for it is, in place of the proper usage of its as possessive pronoun.
   
   While accurate folk wisdom can be a product of illiterate minds, it is possible that stress is responsible for considerable possible failure across cortical areas.
   Thus cognitive polyphasia (a clinical term perhaps too euphemistic)may occur among the literate, and certainly is a characteristic of the semiliterate. One need only witness polls of US citizens' opinions.
   
   I offer this comment to students of psychology (as well as cognitive mapping) as meat for future study across the gamut of present human social behavior, from language acquisition and use, to decisionmaking on vital issues while failing to pursue adequate information in a culture offering more information than any previous.

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8. 8. Bruce Voigt in reply to Michael M 02:50 PM 4/11/12

   "it's" not Voight its V O I G T
   
   Drunk; I'll have an order of chickyflyrice.
   
   Chinese waiter; It's not chickyflyrice, it's, its CHICKEN FRIED RICE you stupid plick.

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