Mental Stress; Brain’s Complexity Resolution Dilemma

Abstract

Mental stress in humans, on the face of it, is the perception of unease, of various degrees, in response to stressors, such as, threats, emotional, economic, socioeconomic and political instabilities, and other conditionssome due to geopolitical conditions and some emblematic of modern timeswhich create intense and/or difficult brain engagements. However, since such perception, besides serving as the alarm phase, could also be indicative of other, and often adverse, physiological effects, it has been the subject of much research since the early decades of last century [1-5]. These efforts, which have resulted in a vast body of the very valuable scientific findings, revolve around the physiological processes that stressors prompt in the biologic system; and how they affect its equilibrium, i.e., its homeostasis. But how the physiological processes are triggered through involvement of sympathetic nervous system and the HPA axis, as well as other systemsthe underlying cause of what can be considered the over-drive engagements of these systemshas seemingly escaped scientific scrutiny and remains unanswered; perhaps because it does not have much bearing on the medical treatments of the ensuing effects of sustained (chronic) stress sensation, and also mainly because much about the details of brain processing of sensory data has not been clearly figured out, though the role of the brain in perception of the world, and life as a whole, has been widely recognized since the enlightenment era; early 17th century. However progress, in last few decades, in understanding modus operandi of the brain, has led to further recognition of the fact that much of the brain operations are computational in nature: It is inferred that brain, and the rest of the nervous system, comprise extensive computational machinery that process all sense-relayed information; using its innate (evolutionary-formulated) instructions, imbedded in its constructs (as patterns), for analyzing events and creating perceptions. In the context of such idealization of the operation of the brain [6], this work is an attempt to throw some light on the puzzle of stress; suggesting a mechanism for creation of its sensation, and the prompting of the physiologic effects.