Well, a new study has brought to light just why we all react to stressful situation differently.
And not surprisingly, they’ve found it’s all down to the way our individual brains are wired.
The study published in Frontiers in Neural Circuits found that those who reacted in a ‘hopeless’ way to stressful situations have similar patterns in brain activity, and the study conductors identified a list of brain areas they believe play a crucial role in ‘stress-induced depression.’
The researchers conducted experiments on mice in a bid to map neuronal activity, and they concluded:
“We found that mice showing “helpless” behavior had an overall brain-wide reduction in the level of neuronal activation compared with mice showing “resilient” behavior, with the exception of a few brain areas.”
In short, our brains react differently to stressful situations, which means some of us are less equipped to respond well to challenges, meaning those types of people are more likely to spiral into depression or despair when faced with adversity.
"In addition, the helpless mice showed a strong trend of having higher similarity in whole-brain activity profile among individuals, suggesting that helplessness is represented by a more stereotypic brain-wide activation pattern," they explained.
Those who fall within the ‘helpless’ – as opposed to ‘resilient’ – categories showed a decreased amount of activity in areas of the mind that are essential for processing emotion, motivation and causing defensive behaviour.
Instead, a brain area called ‘locus coeruleus’ lit up under the stressful conditions, suggesting a link between this section of the brain and stress-induced depression.
This could help towards greater future understanding of our reactions to stressand depression, and help contribute towards the developments of treatments and cures.
Previous research has also pointed to men and women responding differently, too.
Initially, both sexes react the same to situations of stress, going into ‘fight or flight’ mode. But it’s when this is built up over time that men and women responsd in contrasting ways, be it days, weeks or months.
Looking at both cellular and genetic reactions in the brain to stress, recent studies addressed at the Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting
have revealed that the stress hormone triggers different reactions in the male and female brain. And you guessed it, these differences make women less able to cope with chronic stress.
Wasn’t cursing us with periods enough?
But it’s not all bad, as past research has outlined that women are better at controlling their impulses and irrational behaviour under stressful situation.
So that’s something!
To find out more about what stress does to your mind and body, see here.
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