 Last time we were talking about the physical symptoms, the behavior that reflects the stressful state of an individual and then the psychological reactions. Now, when you make a mix of it, means when you say that in totality if you want to see how stress is reflected by a human being, whether it is in terms of the physical reactions of the body, whether it is in terms of certain processes which are you know later on glaringly visible or whether it is in terms of certain forms of behavioral changes. One important factor that we realize looking at the whole set of symptoms is that there is a sound biochemical regulation process. So by default if you say that the muscle becomes tense, if you say that you know stomach clenches, if you say that one has certain degree of forgetfulness or one has certain inability to concentrate. All of them would be guided by some type of biochemical change that takes place during the state of stress. So today what we would do, we would primarily talk about the biochemical regulation and our attempt would be to focus on three different chemicals available in the brain. One serotonin, two norepinephrine and third would be cortisol. Thereafter we will also know look at the prominent brain structure and how the stressful state is achieved and how it influences our psychological output. And then we would move to two important called syndromes which are talked about very vehemently in the area of stress. One the model given by Hansel, you remember Hansel we had discussed right in the beginning when we were trying to define stresses and stress. So he gave a model called general adaptation syndrome which once again has a combination of the physiological mechanism of the body and the psychological output and then we would be talking about the second important syndrome what is called as the burnout syndrome. Now serotonin is also considered to be impulse modulator means neurotransmitter in the brain which has the capacity to modulate the impulses of an individual. Now what could be the possibilities, first possibility that you have a normal level of serotonin in the brain. Second either you go in a hyper state so there is extra secretion of serotonin or there is a hyposecretion that is there is a low amount of secretion of serotonin. Now if you have a balanced level or the normal level of serotonin then you perform your functions as per the requirement of others the environment and your own self. So in terms of psychological processes your thought processes are very clear you can understand things you can extract stimuli from the environment you can think about it very clearly and then you can execute the task and because you can think rationally because you can execute the task therefore it promises certain degree of social success because you have been able to decipher the environment you have also been able to give the desired response the proportionate response. Problem comes when you have either a hypo or a hyper secretion of serotonin what happens if there is a hyper secretion extra amount of serotonin secretion in the brain response to overwhelming environmental threats whereas if there is a hyposecretion it leads to the adaptation to threatening environment and how these things gets reflected in the hyper state you show extreme degree of fearfulness you develop extreme degree of anxiety there are also obsessive compulsive behavior you understand all three of them or you need a little elaboration clear then I will begin with the first one then say fearfulness you understand know that you are extremely scared of certain thing and when we say that it is no extreme fearfulness this means that the environment actually does not want to you to react that way but somehow know your response is disproportionate in that sense no so if you have to be scared in a given situation the level of scary behavior that you reflect basically in the state of hyper secretion of serotonin is a disproportionate response same is the case with anxiety in obsession compulsion basically it know consists of two part obsessive behavior is one part and compulsive behavior is the other part and they are primarily two different but associated operations in the brain obsession reflects a state when you have a single thought that perseverates in your mind and usually these are diminutive thoughts so thought and then know you keep on keep on keep on you know thinking about it that is obsession compulsion when it translates into action so compulsion would be compulsion would be the repeated acts but again these are unjustified acts the way there was no point that you keep on keep on thinking about the same thing for a longer time similarly in a compulsion there is no need for you to repeat the same set of behavior now obsession would be know you have one idea or an array of ideas two three four and know throughout the day you are lost but understand that this is different from what you consider as immersive learning you must have heard this word now if you are put in a workshop in where intense involvement is needed so say one day two day three day workshop where different types of activities are planned there is a final aim that has to be attained but those are the person who has know designed the whole workshop knows what actually has to be achieved you keep on only participating in the process and at the end of it it makes you realize good now I feel better now I feel why I was doing that in such type of workshop sessions they are primarily designed to give you an experience of immersive learning where you are submerged in the thought and that thought sustains within you for a longer time and finally you gain something out of it that is different here there is no such situation simply know thought comes to you or there are two three associated thoughts and it repeats in a cyclic order that is obsession and compulsion is repetition of activities very common examples would be say you lock the door of your room in the hostel and majority of us are you know usually that you call drag to the idea that once you lock it you should at least pull it once to check whether it is locked properly or not to that extent it is fine know that you have locked it you are not very sure about either your reaction or the quality of the lock and hence you pull it once that is fine the problem comes when you start repeating it so lock 1 2 3 let me say locked turn back few steps did I lock it again you turn back and you find it is locked again you go and pull it twice these are compulsive acts there are many more forms of compulsions but because it is so nicely ingrained in our behavior that we hardly realize this is a compulsive act say you are walking from this lecture hall complex to your hall of residence you find a small piece of stone lying in the cycle stand and you hit it once because of its irregular shape the stone moves on the road but keeps on changing the trajectory of movement so it you know you hit in this direction but it goes slightly on the right hand side and you decide to change your path to again go and hit the stone and finally the stone reaches along with you to your hall of residence there was no need for you to chase a small piece of stone and make it also reach your hall of residence but you do that you are no overwhelmed about cleanliness and your whole idea that germs could be there know if I touch places which are utilized by others also and hence I should be much more careful about you know the bacterial infections and therefore you wash your hand all of us wash our hand after certain ants you go to the toilet come back and wash your hand before having a meal you go and wash your hand but if you keep on washing it 10 times you will find the worst cases of OCN it is called obsessive compulsive neurosis or OCD obsessive compulsive disorder the worst sufferers you would find that they even start losing the surface of the skin but they do not stop washing their hands multiple times you are always know dragged by or fascinated by the idea that the room repeatedly will have dust thin film of dust will be here and there so 12 o clock in the night you suddenly wake up and start cleaning your room again 3 o clock you wake up start cleaning your room and you say you know I am very very you know fond of keeping my face cleaned these are the acts of compulsions why these are two things are plucked together because an obsessive thought will certainly lead to a compulsive act therefore obsession and compulsion are always plucked together and we call it OCN or OCD but if you have a high hyposecuration of serotonin that is the lower amount of serotonin in the brain then you show certain degree of adaptation to the threat that you perceive in the environment and hence you become too impulsive you become too aggressive now if there is a need in the environment for you to be impulsive it can be understood if there is a need in the environment for you to be aggressive it is understood but if there is in the need for you to be impulsive or aggressive still you become so take two examples you are sitting here suddenly there is a message on your mobile phone call me and say this is a message from your friend and you just read it and you keep it once I am out at a given time when this lecture would be over I will go out and then make a call to him say that they are I was in the class therefore I could not you call you immediately this is what large majority of us would do but if you are somebody who thinks that there can be messages from others would like to me to call there is no message no message and then you find a message and you say I should definitely call you do not know think of the fact that there is no need for you to show certain form of behavior take one example you have checked your mail you do not have any new mail in your inbox but every few minutes you refresh it as if the whole world is not trying to send a message to you this might not be true in fact this is never true very few people would be interested sending mails to you and few mass mails would reach you you have read the message and now there is no need for you to impulsively know keep on keep on refreshing your inbox but many people do so and a large time of their large know time that they could have otherwise used in productive activities goes only in refreshing mails take another example this is the example of aggressive behavior say you saw an accident taking place somewhere you were coming to the lecture hall complex and you saw an accident taking place in the road and then you decide that I should certainly know help this person reach the nearest health center and you find know that the traffic is very chaotic people are not allowing you to know take this patient to the hospital and you think that there is no urgent need for this patient to be immediately know sent to a doctor and therefore you show certain degree of aggression you shout at people you scream know you show certain aggressive act and you say that know you give way to me because I am carrying a patient who had met an accident and I have to make him reach a doctor within certain time frame these are aggressive acts which are justified but imagine a situation you come little late to the class okay you have to make an entry in the row okay and you suddenly start shouting others why are you sitting here if you have come early you should sit on this side so that I get a proper chair on the other end okay you come early occupy the chair on this side and then okay instructor had told me not to cross from the front and therefore I have to cross the whole row okay it is so difficult such type of aggressive retaliation is not necessary it is not justified okay but what happens in the state of hyposecuration of serotonin okay this is more likely to happen this is bound to happen okay that although there is no need for you to be impulsive and aggressive you do become that okay therefore know imbalances of serotonin will certainly affect the stressful reactions shown by the individual similarly we come to noradrenaline again in the case of noradrenaline we take both the states the hyper and the hypostate noradrenaline is also called as alarm hormone okay so it alarms you later we will talk about the general adaptation syndrome and once again we will refer to noradrenaline there now if you have a hyposecuration of noradrenaline okay it triggers over arousal and a tendency towards impulsive hot blooded acts of violence and the reverse happens when you have a hyposecuration the lower level of noradrenaline where you have a very cold blooded act okay and if you think from psychological viewpoint social viewpoint legal viewpoint neither hot blooded acts nor cold blooded acts are acceptable okay and therefore once you have no extra amount of release of noradrenaline in the brain which leads to no disproportionate amount of know arousal within the individual you are aroused out of nothing okay and it leads you to a point where you commit an act of violence which is extremely hot blooded act okay so you just know consider it oh why are you staring at me although you were sitting in the corner I come and know stab you once twice ten twenty times you must have heard many such situations no unfortunately in most of the cases we do not have no the actual endocrinological report of what has what was the mental state of the individual and what type of a neuro chronological state the person was in but if you look at different acts of violence okay earlier something that we usually think to be visible only in the west now you have such things happenings in India also okay I will take one or two newspaper clips when we come to our next module where we would be talking about aggression school shootout was not a news in India ever okay and most of the school shootout cases we heard about okay was in the US okay for the first time some I think few months back there was a news of school shootout in Punjab and it was the first time to the best of my knowledge in India where you have a reported school shootout episode interesting episodes a student shoots a teacher okay in Bangalore a student stabs a teacher okay in Madurai there are no many such a type of news which comes to the forefront nowadays okay now we do not know or somehow our system is not tuned that way know that once you catch hold of the culprit okay have a thorough profiling done including what was the endocrinological state of the individual that would tell you know what was the level of noradrenaline but at one end you have many such acts okay which are disproportionate acts if you have not done your homework and if your teacher scolds you okay the teacher does not deserve to be stabbed in the class okay imagine that situation know you do not complete your homework the teacher scolds you and then immediately you come and stab the teacher okay this is extreme of the hot blooded act of violence that one can think of think of the cold blooded act of violence I do not know if you remember this news you know I think it is more than one year old news from Uttarakhand where software engineer had who had recently you know come back from abroad because he was expelled from the job there due to all these crunches he comes here know had some tough time with the wife kills her cuts her into pieces goes and buys a deep freezer okay puts all the body parts know the slices in the deep freezer and then every day he would take one piece out okay put it in a bag and then go out as if he is going somewhere or going to walk with the bag okay and he would buy the time he would come back home he would throw the bag somewhere at some deserted place okay now imagine such acts of violence know where you kill somebody then you know just like cheese you cut the human body into pieces then you plan the whole thing then you go and buy a deep freezer you buy multiple bags because you count the body pieces accordingly you buy that many number of bags these are weird type of things that one can think of know but these reflects the cold blooded state of the mind of an individual okay so hyposecretion of noradrenaline leads towards the cold blooded act the third important chemical in the brain we had referred to it in the previous lecture also so the third important chemical in the brain is cortisol now cortisol once it is released okay it has this ability to make the neurons in the brain die okay so what it does is that is it starts killing the brain cells the neurons and therefore because it kills the neurons this would mean that the whole neural circuit that we have for different types of functions that we perform okay that will have less number of cells now because increased amount of cortisol and few cells die okay so initially if you have 16 billion cells it will starts decreasing okay so every time you have extra amount of cortisol there you have a reduction in this this also leads to shrinking of vital brain areas like hippocampus okay just the next slide would be where we would know see that how hippocampus amygdala the limbic system okay they play an important role in emotional regulation so what we call as your ability to know understand the situation and come forward with a very proportionate type of response to come forward with a desired and designated level of emotional involvement and reaction okay are mediated by these structures in the brain but then cortisol makes the size of the hippocampus shrink this means that you have loss of many more neurons you also have shrinking of certain vital brain areas and this means that you are paying a much heavier price for being in the state of stress and in terms of behavior you have impaired thinking you have no very selective attention that is shown by the individual and overall the individual shows extreme degree of anxiety okay now the animations that you see here know basically shows you the amygdala hippocampus the limbic region of the brain here okay which is basically the vital organs in our body which are primarily responsible for regulating emotions okay we have the pituitary here and the hypothalamus glands here okay and these are the important structures in the brain where you have know some change in the chemical regulation the biochemical regulation and then you realize that the stress starts becoming unsurmountable now stimulation of amygdala stimulates the hypothalamus to release what is called as CRH know corticotropin releasing hormone so you have a hormone okay which is released by a hypothalamus gland of the body of the brain and this is stimulated primarily by the stimulation of the amygdala now CRH controls the activity of the pituitary adrenocortical system okay you remember now we were looking at the biochemical regulation and there we had serotonin we are noradrenaline and cortisol okay so the adrenocortical system okay it is influenced by CRH and what it basically does is that it mediates behavioral and autonomous response to anxiety and stress so basically stimulation of the amygdala in turn stimulating the hypothalamus to release CRH CRH in turn stimulating you know the pituitary adrenocortico system okay to influence the state of stress and anxiety in you now the if you perceive a stressful stimulus in your environment it activates your hypothalamus and therefore CRH is released in the brain okay this in turn stimulates the interior pituitary gland in the brain to release ACTH know the adrenocortico tropic hormone okay and when ACTH reaches the adrenal cortex it makes the outer layer of the adrenal adrenal gland release cortisol so and we had seen know how caught is all influences it will make your hippocampus shrink it will know make your brain cells die it will make you become only selectively aware of certain things it will make you over anxious out of nothing so the whole of behavior okay you have once again know if you if I repeat it no amygdala CRH pituitary secretion perception of threat in the external stimulus CRH ACTH ACTH leading to cortisol release cortisol release finally know making you very selectively aware making you very anxious out of nothing okay and finally you pay a heavy price even in terms of physiological functions because you have reduction in the number of the neural connection you also have the shrinking you might have the shrinking of the amygdala now amygdala as we have been discussing know that it plays a very significant role in terms of regulating our emotions so it stimulates the dopamine input okay to the medial prefrontal cortex this is the area where CRH also stimulates the cortex and cortisol triggers the negative feedback channel and therefore what happens that because it triggers the negative feedback channel it inhibits hypothalamus pituitary and the hippocampus activity so it is basically like say you have reached a state okay and gradually you know you come down to a resting state okay so chemically what happens the separation of the LHPA axis okay this finally helps you come to the baseline level of the cortisol but then okay you have a baseline level it goes up it performs certain know it leads you to show certain behavioral inabilities or gets manifested in certain forms of behavior it causes damage to your brain and then finally you reach the baseline level of the cortisol okay now once you reach your cortisol level reaches the baseline you have attained the level of homeostasis you remember when we were referring to the biological defenses psychological defenses and sociocultural defenses know in biological defenses we had referred to homeostasis so in terms of stress and anxiety reactions okay once cortisol secretion reaches the baseline level after this know LHPA axis restoration okay this is a state where finally you have retained the homeostasis but then before you come to this state your behavior has already suffered your brain has already suffered because finally an extra amount of cortisol was released there the problem comes when you have no repeated such situations confronting you and then you know one two or few such episodes coming discreetly to one's life that is perfectly okay there would be stressful experiences in life and therefore that isn't a cause of concern problem only comes when you have no either a sustained phase where something continues for too long or there could be a state where okay you have know the repeated type of situations leading to extra release of cortisol in the brain we now come to Hansel's model you remember when we started this topic we did refer to him and he was a person who first you know tried to advocate that when you have certain types of situations in your environment okay some of the situations that you experience can be interpreted by you as a stressor and they qualify to be a stressor simply because you realize that the demand it poses in front of you it's something that you have difficulty attaining that level okay or you realize that the resources that are available to you and the demand that is made by certain elements in the environment they do not match and therefore you start feeling that resources available to you starts getting depleted the very fear that you know the resources available to me might get exhausted because the situation is disproportionately demanding it okay makes you interpret that this situation is extremely stressful what Hansel did was he was once again looking at the biochemical regulation and trying to associate it with the behavioral reflections so what I will do is that I will know go back to the slide that we had seen earlier where we had the full set of symptoms know the physical symptoms okay where you have tension in the muscle problem in the eating habit so either you over eat or you do not feel eating at all so once again know there is a problem in terms of maintaining that level or know something that you have been well trained for the toilet training I am talking about okay you still find it very difficult to manage simply because you have no disproportionate type of a bowel upset repeatedly feeling headaches back aches okay the whole tendency of becoming restless jittery okay and in terms of other behavior where you have difficulty in terms of concentrating on something okay which would mean primarily that your attention keeps on fluctuating very repeatedly something that you do not want okay you show complete degree of your inability to either sleep or you sleep and you have know all your sleeps are accompanied by frequent wake up sessions you start reporting about difficulty recollecting things back from your memory okay you tend to commit more and more errors commit more and more accidents something which was know not at all too demanding at all like say entering into the row like moving on a street opening a door okay even on small, small steps for which your activities have now become automated there also you show certain degree of clumsiness okay and overall minor things upsets you like anything you become extremely irritated okay your irritation makes you know shout makes you much louder okay and when you start shouting at others you suddenly have tears in your eyes okay now what Hansel did was that he looked at this whole spectrum of behavior okay and then he said that basically there is a situation which alarms you okay associated with the three biochemical regulations we talked about no serotonin noradrenaline and cortisol okay so you have an alarm reaction in you there is a tendency in you to adapt to a situation or to resist to it means your whole idea is to have a control over the situation and finally one attains a stage when once one is completely drained so you are completely exhausted so this was a trafficated stages of the stage of stress what Hansel described as the general adaptation syndrome or what is popularly called as gas so what happens first look at the graph okay now you are running at a baseline level the straight line that you see in the pinkish area okay that is the baseline state okay and then you have no a change okay and then you realize that your resistant to your stress starts increasing so first you have a decrease for a smaller period and then it starts going up okay and then from this area where you have this no whole of increase in the level of resistance that yellow highlighted channel there and then finally you will go to the area of resistance when you your resistance keeps on keeps on keeps on increasing and you come to a state when you cannot handle it anymore and then the downward slide begins and it reaches the dark orange zone that you see there okay where you finally attain a level which goes far below your normal baseline level okay so you are completely completely exhausted okay so we will now discuss all these three stages one by one normal baseline level basically is that the physiological functions of your body okay the neurochemical regulation the biochemical regulation of your body before you experience the stressful state okay this is a state okay this is a state which shows the normal baseline level no so see usually in our no recollect your day to day experience it is not that no a situation comes and immediately within fraction of seconds there is a big change in your reaction you take certain time there is a lull period no there is a small time that you take finally because you have to synthesize all your experiences you have to know contemplate the whole scenario to understand how stressful the situation is okay we need time to do that and that is the time when you know you are still maintaining the baseline level and then suddenly oh my god the moment you have oh my god no this goes down but then you say I have to do something your resistance starts increasing okay you resist to the maximum possible extent using all your resources goes up to certain level and then you say it is enough the downward slide begins and a time comes when you say that is the state of exhaustion so what happens in the first state the alarm reaction body releases adrenaline we have seen that you know the whole CRH, ACTH and the whole axis how it reaches the baseline level so the body releases adrenaline and a variety of other psychological mechanisms to combat the stress and to retain the level of control that one wants to okay so you are under stressful situation and your brain starts releasing adrenaline extra amount of adrenaline is released 980 something has to be done has to be done has to be done so adrenaline keeps on keeps on keeps on getting released and that in turn makes you feel nahi or kushto karnayam I have to do something okay now this is in psychology we popularly call it the fight flight response okay fight response is where you decide keep let me go I will go and do this the fight tendency the flight choro air you would draw okay that is the fight flight situation in fact you will find great amount of literature available on fight flight responses shown by human beings the whole of psychology always always always has been talking about the fight flight reactions bio sorry emotion regulation also you will find large amount of studies looking at emotion describing whole of emotional reaction with respect to fight flight is but these are still know the broad categories okay I must tell you that we are not referring to it because it is not part of Hansel is gas model but if you are interested the new set of research okay which is now indicating that there is a new set of reaction that you see like the fight flight pair what is called as tend to be friend reaction and tend to be friend not I cannot endorse it this is what happens because it is still under research but tend to be friend is a reaction which is seen as of now by the studies which are conducted only in women okay so even though you have to take revenge be friend the person know instead of fighting because if you decide to fight say if I consider you to be the source of frustration for me and if I come to fight you I might receive know all the negativities the consequences might be detrimental for my own self for my own survival okay so instead of fighting is there is a is there a possibility of befriending you and then very quietly know taking the revenge that is the different reaction okay but this is not part of the Hansel is model I just thought I will tell you if you are interested you can you know read literature on this also not many research on tend to be friend reaction but a huge amount of literature you will find on fight flight responses now you have extra amount of adrenaline secreted in your body and therefore you decide your body responds in terms of the fight flight mechanism what gets reflected in your bodily functions you have tense muscles you have rapid beat of your heart your breathing increases perspiration increases and the dilation of the eye also increases know what I okay there are beautiful research know I am deviating frequently but allow me to do that there are beautiful researches in terms of examining the truthfulness of statements made by politicians or those who are in power depending on the blink rates okay and fantastic research on especially on the presidential candidates in the US because they have these debates know so when you are asked questions when you give your opinion okay and there are beautiful research on sick all by psychologists who have no analyze those videotapes analyze the blink rates on different topics and say how truthful or untruthful you were okay this is no what is no usually literature people call it reading between the lines okay there is in fact a beautiful paper on deceit behavior untruthfulness which says reading between the lies so you have spoken 10 minutes of lying your speech okay and I am now based on my research investigation and you have one lie the second lie and I am reading between the lies okay so this is just like metaphorically using the same thing know reading between the lines okay and this is again based on people who do dilation so alarm reaction will show this then comes the second stage that is the stage of resistance or adaptation now what happens the body starts making an attempt for long-term protection okay now further separation of hormones that increases blood sugar level to sustain energy and raise the blood pressure so now in the earlier stage where you had only the adrenaline okay now you have other hormones also know being released in the body in higher quantities okay because you want to retain the blood sugar level as well as your blood pressure level okay these two things so the bodily homeostasis mechanism has to be maintained and therefore extra amount of the hormones starts getting released that is the second phase know you remember just now we had talked about the adrenal cortex so adrenal cortex produces hormone called corticosteroid right now we had referred to it for this resistance reaction but what happens that overuse by the body's defense mechanism in this phase can finally make you susceptible to certain types of diseases because your bodily resources which otherwise would have served you better in the long run okay it has been exhausted because it has been overutilized in a very small period of time okay so it's something like a bank saving how much you withdraw using your ATM cards okay so if you withdraw say 10,000 every month okay this is still a manageable thing because say your father has put say one lakh in your account or one lakh 20,000 in your account okay and every month know you are withdrawing 10,000 so you know that you still have resources available as and when there would be a need I will just go insert my ATM card withdraw certain amount of money but in a given situation you just know go to the ATM machine withdraw 40,000 cash the maximum possible limit per day transaction that is allowed okay two days okay you are left with very minimal amount three days 40,000 withdrawal the whole thing is exhausted okay so resistance adaptation is that very stage now where you have to maintain the level of blood sugar level you have to maintain the blood pressure level okay you have the amount of corticosteroid okay because you want still to have control you are you know still creating your resistance okay but then because you are over exhausting yourself in this process so you are depleting your resources and then comes the stage of exhaustion where the body basically runs out of its reserve for the energy as well as for immunity and that is the reason why you become susceptible to disease now mental physical and emotional resources they are overutilized in this phase and therefore you have suffer heavily for this okay and the body experiences what is called as adrenal exhaustion means your adrenal gland okay your adrenal secretion is no more in a position to support you so remember a situation that you have achieved okay where your biochemical regulation okay has been over exhausted and therefore you can you consider that although you need to reach that baseline level you need certain degree of you know the neurotransmitters but then you also realize that those biochemicals are not available to you in the amount that is needed the blood sugar level decreases adrenal becomes depleted there is a decrease in the stress tolerance level but what finally it is seen in terms of reflected behavior is that you have become extremely irritated the symptom that we have discussed minor things irritates you there is a progressive mental and physical exhaustion so most of the time you are physically exhausted mentally exhausted you become susceptible to illness and there could be a possibility when you collapse so it is like say complete shutdown for certain period so that is all about the general adaptation syndrome which talks about being in a stage of stress where your resources are depleted biochemical regulations are overutilized leading you susceptible to both the physical as well as to mental problems okay when we meet next we will be talking about the second syndrome what is called as the boss or the burnout syndrome.