Title: Stress and Cognitive Decline | HeartMath Institute
Headings: Stress and Cognitive Decline
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Stress and Cognitive Decline
Effects of Stress on Memory and Cognitive Functions
Keeping Your Brain Fit with Positive Emotions and HeartMath Techniques
Positive Emotions
How Stress Affects Heart Coherence
HeartMath Techniques
Alzheimer’s, Stress and the Decline in Memory and Other Brain Functions
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Content: These findings constitute the first evidence that a short period of stress early in life can lead to delayed, progressive impairments of synaptic and behavioral measures of hippocampal function, with potential implications to the basis of age-related cognitive disorders in humans.” In another study, cited by Prevention magazine, German scientists conducted two separate experiments in which 60 participants were subjected to mild forms of emotional and situational stress. The results showed that “women who were stressed took 10% more time to recall recently learned information.” The reason, the article explained, is because the hormones, cortisol, often referred to as the stress hormone, and noradrenalin, flooded the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which controls working memory, where new information is processed and retained. “Our ability to focus, concentrate and remember has a lot to do with how much emotional stress we are experiencing,” write the authors of the book, HeartMath Brain Fitness Program, newly released. “ Emotional stress has a major impact on our immediate and long-term cognitive functions, and underlies many of the mental health problems in society today. Keeping Your Brain Fit with Positive Emotions and HeartMath Techniques
Even as research has intensified recently on how and why cognitive abilities, especially memory, deteriorate with age, so too has the quest to preserve these vital processes for as much of our lives as possible. While various drug therapies provide varying degrees of success, an increasing number of people, including health professionals, are turning to nondrug interventions that have proved to be a more desirable alternative. With stress identified as a primary contributor to memory and other cognitive impairment and low heart coherence, reducing and controlling unhealthy stress levels is a major focus of many research organizations, among them HMI. Positive Emotions
HMI’s intense focus on optimal function research since its founding more than two decades ago led its researchers to make an important discovery: