Stress and Mental Performance

While we all know from personal experience that 'stress' clearly intereferes with our mental function, memory and thinking. How does it do so?

To understand how stress can affect mental preformance, we first must have a basic understanding of how the brain works, what 'stress' is, and thus how it might interfere with our mental performance. Then what role nutrition may play in changing our stress levels and optimising our mental performance is the subject of the next chapter.
Mental Performance and Brain Integration.

Mental performance relies totally upon maintaining integrated brain function under stress also known as Brain Integration. Brain Integration is a new understanding of brain function derived from the latest research of how the brain works. In the old view of the brain, different types of thinking and memory were thought to be performed in specific areas of the cortex based on sensory input. Therefore you either accessed these functions and could easily think in certain ways and remember well, or you couldn't.

Back to Top

Brain Function: An Important New Discovery

The new view of the brain is far more dynamic. Thinking and memory are no longer seen as being based in single hierarchical systems, with specific functions performed entirely in one location, but rather are now seen to be widely distributed systems with processing done at many different locations and levels throughout the brain.

This multiplexing and parallel processing are highly efficient and provide enormous processing capacity in a very small space. But it means the brain is 'time-bound', that is dependent upon the synchronization and precise timing of neural flows both within processing centers and between these centers to maintain efficient function.

Back to Top

Brain Integration: Critical For Everything

Because even simple mental processes are performed in many different parts of the brain, often at different speeds, to create coherent output in the form of thinking requires the integration of all these separate processes. Thinking at higher levels requires even more brain regions to become involved, relying on even higher levels of integration. The highest level of thinking is found in the executive, decision-making functions of the frontal lobes of the brain, and thus requires the highest levels of integration to work effectively.

Back to Top