Brain Function under high Stress

[rickp]

Hey guys,
Does anyone know of any really good technical reference material (web or otherwise) on how the different parts of the brain function under high stress and how it affects our thought process as it pertains to fighting and our community. I watched a Louis Awerbuck's video called "Analysis of the Survival Mindset" where he touched on the kind of information I'm looking for.

I've read "On Combat" by Col. Grossman years back and I found that educational and interesting.

Thanks

R.

[Arctic1]

Here are a few articles on the subject:

http://hpl.uchicago.edu/Publications...%20Failure.pdf

http://essay.utwente.nl/61212/1/Jong..._(verslag).pdf

http://www.kslinternationalarchery.c...20Pressure.pdf

http://www.unicommons.com/sites/defa...lspressure.pdf

A few interesting quotes:

In a 2008 study Oudejans rounded up a group of Dutch police officers and askedhalf of them to practice their marksmanship skills by shooting at a cardboard target; the otherhalf trained by firing shots directly at one another (the cartridges contained soap, not bullets).After three one-hour training sessions, the “performance” was on: an officer-on-officer shoot-out using the dummy cartridges. The officers who had practiced on cardboard targets caved in this new tension-filled situation, whereas the group that had trained under the samestressful conditions thrived, notching much higher accuracy ratings than the other group did.
These results indicate that turning up the heat from the very first day of practice may be oneof the most effective ways to immunize yourself against blowing it.

The players sailed through the second trial with flying colors—except the ones who focusedon multiple aspects of their putt, according to the results published in the January 2008Psychology of Sport and Exercise. “When they were focusing on the three representativemechanical processes, that was when their performance dropped,” Gucciardi noted. Similarly,in 1999 psychologist Lew Hardy of the University of Wales found that performers who thinkabout a concrete, detailed set of rules during their moment in the spotlight (“keep skis high inthe air” and “keep body streamlined” for a ski jumper, for instance) are more likely tosuccumb to pressure than are those who do not have such a specific set of rules in mind.

In summary, it appears that acquisition of motor skills by analogy may sta-bilize performance under pressure; however, longitudinal studies of the type con-ducted by Koedijker et al., (2007) are required to confirm the durability of thiseffect. Analogy learning is a simple and efficient method of coaching because itreduces the amount of information that must be processed to a bare minimum.

What is interesting to note, is that there is no mention of the sympathetic nervous system, "fight or flight" response, in any of the articles. The main findings point to how training is conducted, and that training is the biggest factor in determining how you will perfrom under pressure.

I would also like to add this quote by Dr. Martin Fackler, emphasis by me:

Fackler ML: "Shots to the Pelvic Area ". Wound Ballistics Review. 4(1):13; 1999.

“I welcome the chance to refute the belief that the pelvic area is a reasonable target during a gunfight. I can find no evidence or valid rationale for intentionally targeting the pelvic area in a gunfight. The reasons against, however, are many. They include:

-- From the belt line to the top of the head, the areas most likely to rapidly incapacitate the person hit are concentrated in or near the midline. In the pelvis, however, the blood vessels are located to each side, having diverged from the midline, as the aorta and inferior vena cava divide at about the level of the navel. Additionally, the target that, when struck, is the most likely to cause rapid and reliable incapacitation, the spinal cord located in the midline of the abdomen, thorax and neck), ends well above the navel and is not a target in the pelvis.
-- The pelvic branches of the aorta and inferior vena cava are more difficult to hit than their parent vessels -- they are smaller targets, and they diverge laterally from the midline (getting farther from it as they descend). Even if hit, each carry far less blood than the larger vessels from which they originated. Thus, even if one of these branches in the pelvis is hit, incapacitation from blood loss must necessarily be slower than from a major vessel hit higher up in the torso.
-- Other than soft tissue structures not essential to continuing the gunfight (loops of bowel, bladder) the most likely thing to be struck by shots to the pelvis would be bone. The ilium is a large flat bone that forms most of the back wall of the pelvis. The problem is that handgun bullets that hit it would not break the bone but only make a small hole in passing through it: this would do nothing to destroy bony support of the pelvic girdle. The pelvic girdle is essentially a circle: to disrupt its structure significantly would require breaking it in two places. Only a shot that disrupted the neck or upper portion of the shaft of the femur would be likely to disrupt bony support enough to cause the person hit to fall. This is a small and highly unlikely target: the aim point to hit it would be a mystery to those without medical training — and to most of those with medical training.

The “theory” stated in the question postulates that “certain autonomic responses the body undergoes during periods of stress” causes officers to shoot low, and that apparently this is good in a gunfight because such shots cause “severe disability.” I hope that the points presented above debunk the second part of the theory. As for the “autonomic responses” that cause officers to shoot low, I am unaware of anything in the anatomy or physiology of the autonomic nervous system that would even suggest such an occurrence. Most laymen do not understand the function of the autonomic nervous system. It is simply a system whose main function is to fine tune the glands and smooth muscles (those in the walls of organs and blood vessels) of the body. During times of stress such as perceived impending danger, the autonomic nervous system diverts blood from the intestines and digestive organs to the skeletal muscles — in the so-called “fight or flight” response. The effects of this response are constantly exaggerated by laymen who lack an adequate understanding of it — most notably by gun writ-ers eager to impress their readers. Interestingly, the human body can get along quite well without major parts of the autonomic nervous system. During my professional life as a surgeon, myself and colleagues removed parts of thousands of vagus nerves (mostly in treating peptic ulcer disease) -- thus depriving the patient of the major part of the parasympathetic half of the autonomic nervous system. We also removed many ganglia from the sympathetic half of the auto-nomic nervous system, in treating such things as profusely excess sweating and various problems caused by spasm of the arteries. I am unaware of any evidence that these operations produced any significant effect on the future capacity of these patients to react appropriately in times of impending danger.

Unfortunately, the pelvis shot fallacy is common. This fallacy, along with other misinformation, is promoted constantly by at least one gun writer who is widely published in the popular gun press. Because of this, I regularly debunk this fallacy by including some of the above rationale in my presentations to law enforcement firearm instructor groups.”

A sympathetic response can entail any combination of the following physiological reactions:

• Acceleration of heart and lung action
• Paling or flushing, or alternating between both
• Inhibition of stomach and upper-intestinal action to the point where digestion slows down or stops
• General effect on the sphincters of the body
• Constriction of blood vessels in many parts of the body
• Liberation of metabolic energy sources (particularly fat and glycogen) for muscular action
• Dilation of blood vessels for muscles
• Inhibition of the lacrimal gland (responsible for tear production) and salivation
• Dilation of pupil (mydriasis)
• Relaxation of bladder
• Inhibition of erection
• Auditory exclusion (loss of hearing)
• Tunnel vision (loss of peripheral vision)
• Disinhibition of spinal reflexes
• Shaking

Here is a link describing the chemical process:

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/conte.../fight_flight/

One of the more common discussion topics in regards to performance under stress is the notion that fine motor skills are lost, and that you can only use gross motor skills. This is completely untrue.

[rickp]

Thanks Arctic1. I'll reading on that.

Lt. Col Grossman touches on the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS)and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS).

He also goes into other reactions that body has as a result of high stress and how the above system are tied into that.

The Awerbuck video I mentioned on my fist post also briefly touched on some physical characteristic differences between a normal good guy brain (so to speak) and the criminal brain, which goes to explain some their behavior.

Again thanks for the info.

[JimP]

Get the book: "Deep Survival" by Laurence Gonzalez. GREAT book explaining how this all works in a very understandable, readable way.

[Arctic1]

@rickp:

The Autonomic Nervous System is divided into the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems. The Sympathetic Nervous System is what triggers the "fight or flight response", that causes the effects I listed above.

Dr. Grossman is widely cited, and he does a lot of good work regarding mindset and similar topics, but his work is subject to a lot of skepticism amongst other scholars, because some of his ideas and thoughts are not easily quantified or documented.

I attended a lecture by a Norwegian psychologist who works at the Norwegian Army Military Academy as a lecturer. He listed a commonly used table, showing the relationship between a hormonally induced heart rate increase, as opposed to excercise induced, and deterioration of bodily functions:

• 70 Normal
• 115-145 Optimal survival & combat performance zone
• 145 Fine motor skills starts to deteriorate
• 145 Complex motor skills starts to deteriorate
• 175 Critical Stress Amnesia
• 175 Visual tracking becomes difficult
• 175 Cognitive processes starts to deteriorate
• 185-220 Hypervigilance leads to hyperventilation

Here is a download link to his paper:

http://rapidshare.com/files/37044599...efficiency.doc

Now, I am not making a claim that people are unaffected by experiencing stress. It is quite obvious that people are. My main point of contention is that you will find examples every day of people performing actions requiring great feats or dexterity (as opposed to fine motor skills, which you cannot lose) while under enormous amounts of stress. People who solve complex problems requiring a fully functional cognitive ability, while under great amounts of stress.

And, like I quoted from the studies above, it all boils down to training. This incompasses both training level and how training is conducted. If you train with stress (physical exertion, time limits, accuracy requirements) you will be used to performing in those kinds of situations.

If you train to predetermined standards, SOPs, even mechanics (draw strokes, weapon manipulation etc.), so that they are ingrained in your memory, this is what you can do when you are stressed.

Add psychological stress by using visual stimuli in your training (if relevant or applicable). For example live tissue training during first aid training, using pig entrails to simulate carnage, for example when doing MOUT training.

If you half-ass your training, you probably won't do very well in a real life situation. If you are properly trained to set standards under stressful conditions, you will be capable or of performing to those standards in stressful situations as well.

[specopsscout]

Sharpening the Warriors Edge by Bruce K. Siddle

[Ironman8]

I attended a lecture by a Norwegian psychologist who works at the Norwegian Army Military Academy as a lecturer. He listed a commonly used table, showing the relationship between a hormonally induced heart rate increase, as opposed to excercise induced, and deterioration of bodily functions:

• 70 Normal
• 115-145 Optimal survival & combat performance zone
• 145 Fine motor skills starts to deteriorate
• 145 Complex motor skills starts to deteriorate
• 175 Critical Stress Amnesia
• 175 Visual tracking becomes difficult
• 175 Cognitive processes starts to deteriorate
• 185-220 Hypervigilance leads to hyperventilation

Here is a download link to his paper:

http://rapidshare.com/files/37044599...efficiency.doc

I haven't gotten a chance to look at your link, but the bolded portion intrigued me. I'm not sure what conclusion to draw from the list, so in layman's terms, what was the relationship for training to a standard under exercise induced stress vs. the hormonally induced stress you would feel in a gun fight?

Is it beneficial to train with exercise induced stress in order to learn how to manage the hormonal stress?

[Arctic1]

Well, the author of the paper claims that it is not enough to introduce excercise induced stress during training:

The reason that you can reach very high heart rates in just a blink of an eye when somebody is shooting at you is that the stress you experience in a life-threatening situation is elicited by hormones and not from doing anything physical. If you want to function as effectively as possible during a stressful situation, it is not enough just to practice endurance, or physical ability. It is also necessary for you to practice with hormonal stress or fear, as this is the main type of stress that you will experience in a fight. Table 5 shows the different heart rates and what will happen with you under the influence of HIA.

Table 5 is the numbers I posted previously.

HIA = Hormone Induced Activation of the nervous system (SNS)

Based on my personal, and purely anecdotal experience, I don't buy into the absolute claims made by proponents of this theory, when it comes to actual perfomance under stress by trained personell. I have experienced tunnel vision and sense of time distortion (tactical field care situation on Cat A pt.), but nothing even resembling becoming unable to perform under stress. I attribute this not to some super tough persona, but to the fact that my level of training is sufficient to perform to the actual level of my training.

I remember when I was younger, out drinking with buddies and a fight was brewing. I could physically feel the rush of adrenaline; knot in my stomach, tingling fingers, becoming more focused. Now, I am more in control and barely notice anything.

Of course, interpretation of stress can vary from situation to situation. Stress Levels can also build up over prolonged exposure.

One good training method for guys to become somewhat used to stress and fear of bodily harm is FoF training, and combatives. It's important to get knocked around a bit, take a few punches.

[rickp]

Well, the author of the paper claims that it is not enough to introduce excercise induced stress during training:



Table 5 is the numbers I posted previously.

HIA = Hormone Induced Activation of the nervous system (SNS)

Based on my personal, and purely anecdotal experience, I don't buy into the absolute claims made by proponents of this theory, when it comes to actual perfomance under stress by trained personell. I have experienced tunnel vision and sense of time distortion (tactical field care situation on Cat A pt.), but nothing even resembling becoming unable to perform under stress. I attribute this not to some super tough persona, but to the fact that my level of training is sufficient to perform to the actual level of my training.

I remember when I was younger, out drinking with buddies and a fight was brewing. I could physically feel the rush of adrenaline; knot in my stomach, tingling fingers, becoming more focused. Now, I am more in control and barely notice anything.

Of course, interpretation of stress can vary from situation to situation. Stress Levels can also build up over prolonged exposure.

One good training method for guys to become somewhat used to stress and fear of bodily harm is FoF training, and combatives. It's important to get knocked around a bit, take a few punches.

I would have to agree with that to a certain point.
IMO, the reason to train with physical activity is not to inoculate an individual of the hormonal affects of the situation as explained above but for the individual and his body to be able to manage those effects better. The better shape a person is in and the more he trains with a high heart rate allows the individual to learn how to manage and possible lower the symptoms the body goes through when in a fight.
Whether the cause of the physiological effects a body experiences are hormone induced or physically induced, some of those effects are the same or share a common ground. So if one can teach the mind and prepare the body to best deal with it the, the end result is similar.

While there might be some common ground between hormonal and physical symptoms, IMO, there's is no absolute substitute for actual exposure and experience to a real fight.

R.

[26 Inf]

Kathleen Vonk has published several articles about the differences between biological and exercise induced stress - she pretty much debunks the 'have them jog until they are in the ideal range and then perform the task' model.

In stress management there is a saying: 'In stress it is mind over matter, if you don't mind then it don't matter' (bad grammar intentional) in Reality Based Training what you strive to achieve is the mindset that 'Ahh, I've already been to this gunfight.'

As Arctic1 posted - if you want people to survive force-on-force encounters, train them using force-on force methods.

Instinct is an impulse or powerful motivation from a subconscious source. For instance, if you were crossing the street and a car comes speeding towards you, you would try to jump out of the way before it even 'registers' with your conscious mind that a car is coming.

The part of your brain that is associated with these types of reactions is the amygdala. As you may know, different parts of the brain receive different signals and make them consciously known. The auditory cortex, for example, is responsible for hearing. The amygdala has its own set of 'receivers' for sensory intake. In the aforementioned scenario, it will take in information from the surroundings, like the sight on the car coming at you, and make a decision on what to do before you consciously think about it.

While this response is very important for survival, it is very primitive. It's commonly called the fight or flight response, for obvious reasons. This response makes us "downshift" and use only our lower brain. That means we sometimes cannot think of a logical solution to a problem. Anger makes many people with anger control problems downshift. They cannot think of a moral solution, so they do something destructive. When you are downshifted you become less at efficient at less things. This is why a dangerous school environment keeps children from reaching their learning potential.
(this is from an article I copied to a file and I can not source it.)

Here they are - http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...9QEwAw&dur=721

From what I've learned this view of the amygdala as the hijacker of learned/cognitive/conscious response is simplistic. I am a simple guy so here is my analogy -

think of your cerebral cortex as a huge rolodex of all your learning from the experiences you've had - in life and in the class room;

now think of the phrase 'my life flashed before my eyes' that is sometimes heard after a stressful experience that one is unprepared for;

equate that 'flashed before my eyes' with your brain cycling rapidly through the rolodex of your retained memories to find a solution to the problem - in the case of a gunfight if all you've done is shoot at targets, then that quick flash through the rolodex probably won't equate any experience you've had with the current emergency;

lacking a memory/experience to grab onto, the amygdala will divert your actions to the primitive, versus learned response;

if you've created a memory - either by mental rehearsal or by actually experiencing a similar situation the amygdala will 'stick a finger' into the rolodex at that spot and that is the sheet off which you'll operate.

Like I said I'm a simple man, here's some more unsourced stuff I've copied over the years that explains this concept:

Emotional learning

In complex vertebrates, including humans, the amygdalae perform primary roles in the formation and storage of memories associated with emotional events. Research indicates that, during fear conditioning, sensory stimuli reach the basolateral complexes of the amygdalae, particularly the lateral nuclei, where they form associations with memories of the stimuli. The association between stimuli and the aversive events they predict may be mediated by long-term potentiation, a lingering potential for affected synapses to react more readily.[3]

Memories of emotional experiences imprinted in reactions of synapses in the lateral nuclei elicit fear behavior through connections with the central nucleus of the amygdalae and the bed nuclei of stria terminalis (BNST). The central nuclei are involved in the genesis of many fear responses, including freezing (immobility), tachycardia (rapid heartbeat), increased respiration, and stress-hormone release. Damage to the amygdalae impairs both the acquisition and expression of Pavlovian fear conditioning, a form of classical conditioning of emotional responses.[3]

The amygdalae are also involved in appetitive (positive) conditioning. It seems that distinct neurons respond to positive and negative stimuli, but there is no clustering of these distinct neurons into clear anatomical nuclei.[9]

Different nuclei within the amygdala have different functions in appetitive conditioning.[10]

Memory modulation

The amygdalae also are involved in the modulation of memory consolidation. Following any learning event, the long-term memory for the event is not instantaneously formed. Rather, information regarding the event is slowly assimilated into long-term storage over time (the duration of long-term memory storage can be life-long), a process referred to as memory consolidation, until it reaches a relatively permanent state.

During the consolidation period, the memory can be modulated. In particular, it appears that emotional arousal following the learning event influences the strength of the subsequent memory for that event. Greater emotional arousal following a learning event enhances a person's retention of that event. Experiments have shown that administration of stress hormones to mice immediately after they learn something enhances their retention when they are tested two days later.[11]

Amygdala activity at the time of encoding information correlates with retention for that information. However, this correlation depends on the relative "emotionalness" of the information. More emotionally-arousing information increases amygdalar activity, and that activity correlates with retention.

And here is another interesting article:

FOOTBALL AND THE UNCONSCIOUS
Posted on: December 11, 2008 9:54 AM, by Joshua Lehrer

In the latest New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has a thought-provoking article on the difficulty of figuring out what sort of person is best suited for a particular job. He begins by discussing the challenge of choosing college quarterbacks, a topic that I've written about a few times before (and cover at length in my forthcoming book):

All quarterbacks drafted into the pros are required to take an I.Q. test--the Wonderlic Personnel Test. The theory behind the test is that the pro game is so much more cognitively demanding than the college game that high intelligence should be a good predictor of success. But when the economists David Berri and Rob Simmons analyzed the scores--which are routinely leaked to the press--they found that Wonderlic scores are all but useless as predictors. Of the five quarterbacks taken in round one of the 1999 draft, Donovan McNabb, the only one of the five with a shot at the Hall of Fame, had the lowest Wonderlic score. And who else had I.Q. scores in the same range as McNabb? Dan Marino and Terry Bradshaw, two of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game.

Why is the Wonderlic so useless at predicting which quarterbacks will succeed? The reason is that finding the open man during an NFL game involves a very different set of decision-making skills than solving a problem on an IQ test.

While quarterbacks need to grapple with complexity - the typical offensive playbook is several inches thick - they don't make sense of the football field the way they make sense of questions on a multiple-choice exam. The Wonderlic measures a specific kind of thought process, but the best quarterbacks don't think in the pocket. There isn't time.

So how do quarterbacks do it? How do they make a decision? It's like asking a baseball player why he decided to swing the bat: the velocity of the game makes thought impossible. What recent research in neuroscience suggests is that quarterbacks choose where to throw the ball by relying on their unconscious brain. Just as a baseball player will decide to swing at a pitch for reasons he can't explain (he' is acting on subliminal cues from the hand of the pitcher), an experienced quarterback picks up defensive details he's not even aware of. Although he doesn't consciously perceive the lurking cornerback, or the blitzing linebacker, the quarterback's unconscious is still able to monitor the movement of these players. And then, when he glances at his receivers, his brain automatically converts these details into a set of fast emotional signals, so that a receiver in tight coverage gets associated with a twinge of fear, while an open man triggers a burst of positive feeling. It's these inarticulate emotions, and not some elaborate set of rational calculations, that tell the best quarterbacks when to let the ball fly. The pocket, it turns out, is too dangerous a place to think.

Gladwell goes on to argue that the failure of the Wonderlic and the dismal track record of NFL scouts suggests that drafting a QB is ultimately a crapshoot:

We're used to dealing with prediction problems by going back and looking for better predictors. We now realize that being a good doctor requires the ability to communicate, listen, and empathize--and so there is increasing pressure on medical schools to pay attention to interpersonal skills as well as to test scores. We can have better physicians if we're just smarter about how we choose medical-school students. But no one is saying that Dan Shonka is somehow missing some key ingredient in his analysis; that if he were only more perceptive he could predict Chase Daniel's career trajectory. The problem with picking quarterbacks is that Chase Daniel's performance can't be predicted. The job he's being groomed for is so particular and specialized that there is no way to know who will succeed at it and who won't.

I'm not that pessimistic. I think the real problem is that, for the last several decades, we've just been measuring the wrong things. We've assumed that passing decisions are rational decisions when, in fact, there's nothing rational about them. Obviously, it's a bit more difficult to measure the unconscious, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.

I'd also argue that this new emphasis on the learned expertise of the unconscious - as opposed to the innate intelligence measured by the Wonderlic - suggests that an essential determining factor of how a QB will perform in the NFL is how they are trained and taught. Look at the Patriots. After Tom Brady was injured, Matt Cassel - a QB who hadn't started a game since high-school - was able to become a surprisingly good substitute. (This doesn't mean the Pats will make the playoffs, but that's another story.) Why did Cassel succeed when so many other high-profile QB's fail? I think part of the answer is Bill Belichick's emphasis on situational practice.

What separates Patriots training camp is the attention to detail and emphasis on situational football. Two-minute drills, four-minute drills, and coming-out-of-your-own-end-zone scenarios are situations in which the Patriots preach what they practice.

"The most important thing that I saw that he did in his training camps, the thing that he does that in my opinion makes that team better is that he has specific practices set aside for situational football," said former Patriots tight end Christian Fauria.

Fauria, who played in New England from 2002-05 and also has played for the Seattle Seahawks, Washington Redskins, and Carolina Panthers, said in his first camp with the Patriots, Belichick created a situation: It was late in the fourth quarter and the Patriots had the ball at their 17 with 1:21 left and no timeouts, needing a field goal.
Sound familiar? Belichick recreated the situation that led to Adam Vinatieri's field goal in Super Bowl XXXVI.

"They redid that situation. I remember that sticking out in my mind," said Fauria. "Ultimately, those situations can make the difference between winning and losing, being able to make those small, quick decisions that the other guy might not know."

That is how you train the unconscious: not with dry recitations of the playbook, but with realistic simulations. As a result, players are able to practice decision-making - what should I do on fourth and short with a corner blitz? - just as they'd practice throwing a deep pass.