September 9, 2010
Exposure to stress puts brain on high alert
Hotchkiss Brain Institute scientist published in prestigious journal
(Calgary, Alberta) “We know that the brain is responsible for your response to stress. We also know that once you’re exposed to stress, you’re primed to respond more robustly to other stresses. What’s particularly vexing as a scientist is trying to understand how the brain does this,” says Jaideep Bains, PhD, an associate professor in the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the University of Calgary who is funded by Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions. “That is how your brain is supposed to work. The dilemma is, when people are exposed to chronic stress, their brain is permanently primed to go into overdrive,” says Bains, PhD.
The Faculty of Medicine team, including UCalgary post-doctoral fellow Brent Kuzmiski, PhD, is being published in the October issue of the prestigious international journal Nature Neuroscience. Following up on findings in which they identified the specific mechanism in the brain that switches on the stress command centre, the team has now shown, in rats, a mechanism that primes the cells to be on “standby” for any new stresses.
“If you are consistently exposed to stress at work or in your personal life, your brain stays stuck in hyper-vigilant mode,” says Bains, PhD. “Understanding stress at the level of the brain cells is vital, because stress is a complex chain reaction. Currently, there are very few treatments for stress, and many of the ones currently available target symptoms often associated with stress – depression, fatigue, and memory loss.”
Bains’ team has discovered that stress signals arriving in the brain leave a molecular imprint on the brain cells that lasts about a week. Those imprinted cells then respond more strongly to stress-relevant signals from the brain.
“It is essential that our brain is able to respond quickly to stress, release hormones, and activate the fight-or-flight response – this is a fundamental survival mechanism,” says Bains, PhD. “In today’s world of conflicting priorities, we may need to protect the brain against overreacting to chronic stress. Building on these findings, we could potentially uncover new therapeutic targets to soothe the brain’s stress centre by turning off the tap to the stress reaction.”
For the first time, these scientists were able to introduce an antidote prior to the stress signals being received by the cells – thereby neutralizing the overreaction of the brain’s stress command centre to incoming stress signals.
The 2002-2003 Watson Wyatt survey, Staying@Work, surveyed 180 organizations with more than 500,000 full-time Canadian employees, finding that psychological disorders (defined as depression, anxiety and stress) are the main cause of 79 per cent of short- term disability claims, and 73 per cent of long-term disability claims. A study in 2000 by D. R. Anderson and colleagues published in the American Journal of Health Promotion surveyed 46,026 people at six large American companies, reporting that stress accounted for $6.2 billion or 7.9 per cent of health insurance costs.
Bains’ research is funded by Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
For more information about the research team visit
http://homepages.ucalgary.ca/~jsbains/lab/index.html
Media contacts:
Karen Thomas, Media Specialist, Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions,
1.877.423.5727 x225, 403.651.1112 (cell),
News Media: Raw Footage with B-roll (size: 109.4 MB)
Still Images for Download:
Jaideep Bains by Trudie Lee 1
Jaideep Bains by Trudie Lee 2
September 3, 2010
Exposure to stress puts brain on high alert
Hotchkiss Brain Institute scientist published in prestigious journal
(Calgary, Alberta) “The dilemma we have as scientists studying stress is that once you are exposed to stress, your brain is primed to react robustly to other stresses,” says Jaideep Bains, PhD, an Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions funded associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary. “That is how your brain is supposed to work. The dilemma is, when people are exposed to chronic stress, their brain is permanently primed to overreact,” says Bains, PhD.
The Bains team at the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, including UCalgary post-doctoral fellow Brent Kuzmiski, PhD, is being published in the October issue of the prestigious international journal Nature Neuroscience. The team has identified the specific mechanism in the brain that switches on the stress command centre and primes the cells to be on “standby” for any new stress. This basic research with rats provides an essential blueprint for potential clinical research into medications that would neutralize stress by stopping it from building up in the brain.
Reporters are invited to meet the Bains team at 10 a.m. on Thursday, September 9, 2010 in Health Sciences Lab 2077, 3330 Hospital Drive NW.
| WHO: | Jaideep Bains, PhD, associate professor, University of Calgary |
| WHAT: | Exposure to stress puts brain on high alert |
| WHERE: | Lab 2077, Health Sciences, 3330 Hospital Drive NW Please park in Lot 6 for reimbursement |
| WHEN: | Thursday, September 9, 2010, 10 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. |
Media contact: Karen Thomas, Media Specialist, Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions, 1.877.423.5727 x225, 403.651.1112 (cell),