Scientists Develop A Vaccine For Stress
Is this a step on the path to a Brave New World? The head of a research team at Stanford says he is on the verge of producing a vaccine that would deactivate the brain’s stress-causing chemicals. For the first time, people could shut off the fight-or-flight mechanism that has determined our behavior (and helped ensure our survival) since the caveman era. Via CBS News:
Dr Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscience professor at Stanford, says after 30 years of studying stress, his team might be on the verge of a novel cure.
Sapolsky has long theorized that, unlike some animals, humans are unable to turn off stress chemicals used for the fight-or-flight mechanism. A class of hormone called glucocorticoids are one of the chief offenders, according to Sapolsky.
So his team has pioneered a way to bootstrap a “herpes virus to carry engineered ‘neuroprotective’ genes deep into the brain to neutralize the rogue hormones…
Early Life Stress Has Effects at the Molecular Level
by Lin Edwards in PhysOrg.com:
A new study of mice suggests that stress and trauma in early life can have an impact on the genes and result in behavioral problems later in life.
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany, looked at the long-term effects of stress mice suffered soon after their birth. The stress was produced by separating the mouse pups from their mothers for three hours a day for the first ten days of their lives. The separation did not affect their nutrition but would have made them feel abandoned. The pups were then followed through their lives.
The researchers found the stress caused the baby mice to produce hormones that altered their genes and affected their later behavior, making them less able to cope with stress later in life. The mice exposed to the stresses also had poorer memories than the control group.
The leader of the…
