Stress may diminish our ability to sense new dangers 

Contrary to the conventional view that stress enhances our ability to detect sources of threat, a team of researchers have found that it diminishes the ability to predict new dangers.

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What research says?

• The research indicated that stress reduces physiological response to the new threat cue.
• The researchers applied a computational learning model to further understand how stress affects flexibility in decision-making.
• This analysis revealed a learning deficit for the subject put under the stress condition that participants used to update the cue associations.
• In short, this resulted in a slower rate of learning.
• Researchers,our study shows that when we are under stress, we pay less attention to changes in the environment.
• In addition,potentially putting us at an increased risk for ignoring new sources of threat.

Experiments:

• The researchers conducted a series of experiments to test the ability to learn to flexibly update threat responses under stressful conditions.
• Here, the participants viewed images on a computer screen.
• The appearance of some images were coupled with a mild, electric wrist-shock.
• Half of the participants underwent a laboratory procedure a day later designed to induce stress.
• This “stress group” placed their arm in an ice-water bath for a few minutes, which elevated the two stress hormones — alpha-amylase and cortisol.
• Later, all the participants repeated the threat-conditioning procedure.
• However, this time the cue outcomes switched.
• The earlier threatening cue no longer predict shock, but the formerly safe cue did.
• While the participants viewed the images, the researchers collected physiological arousal responses in order to measure how individuals anticipated the outcome of each cue.
• On the second day, the “stress group” was less likely to change their responses to threats than the control group.