You are under considerable stress since your doctor knows NOTHING about getting you to 100% recovery. Is that stress contributing to your lack of recovery? A very simple question for your doctor to answer, not dodge the question.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=171513&CultureCode=en
Stress is part of our everyday lives – while some thrive on it, it makes others sick. But what does stress do to our senses?
When we train them, we can sharpen our senses thereby improve our
perceptual performance. The stress hormone cortisol completely blocks
this important ability. In the current issue of
“Psychoneuroendocrinology” neuroscientists of the Ruhr University Bochum
(RUB) report on this finding.
“Previous research has already shown that stress can prevent the
retrieval of memories. But now we have discovered that it also has a
major effect on our perception and perceptual learning,” explains Dr
Hubert Dinse, one of the authors of the study.
Tactile sense in training
In their study, researchers investigated how the sense of touch of 30
study participants could be changed after a training phase. Half of
them received a medium dose of the stress hormone cortisol, while the
other half received a placebo drug.
To make training comparable across all participants, the researchers
employed the well-established approach of passive finger stimulation.
Previous studies and several therapy approaches have shown that this
method leads to an improved tactile acuity.
Tactile performance was assessed using the so-called “two-point
discrimination threshold”. This marker indicates how far apart two
stimuli need to be, to be discriminated as two separate sensations – the
closer they are, the better the sense of touch.
No learning effect after cortisol
The placebo group improved their tactile acuity, as expected, by
about 15 percent. In contrast, the cortisol given to the other group
blocked almost all the stimulation-induced improvement. Cognitive
psychologist Prof Dr Oliver T. Wolf explains:” Our data show that a
single dose of cortisol not only disrupts memory in the hippocampus, but
it also has a substantial effect on the plasticity of sensory areas of
the brain.”
Cortisol blocks synaptic connections
In previous studies on a cellular level, neuroscientists have
demonstrated that cortisol suppresses the strengthening of synaptic
connections, and therefore the plasticity of the brain – its ability to
learn. The team led by Hubert Dinse therefore suggests, their results
could also explain by cortisol-induced suppression of synaptic
plasticity.
Effects on clinical treatments
The results of the study could also affect clinical treatments.
Corticosteroids, of which cortisol is one, are often used in the
treatment of immunological and neurological diseases. However, the
effects on perceptual learning observed in this study may counteract
rehabilitation efforts, which rely on just these mechanisms. It is
therefore necessary to find out which effects the clinical treatment
with these substances has on learning mechanisms in the brain.
Funding
Scientists from the fields of neuroinformatics and cognitive
psychology, as well as from the Neurological Clinic Bergmannsheil
collaborated on this research project. They were all funded by a grant
to Collaborative Research Centre 874 from the German Research Foundation
(Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).
http://news.rub.de/english/press-releases
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