History of Stress by Sarah Cordrey

Plato & The Ancient Greeks

sarahcord14 — 2024-09-03 18:56:45 UTC

Plato and the Greeks held a metaphysically dualistic view of mind and body.

The Greeks believed that there was the physical world and pure forms.

Plato believed the mind and body were two separate entities and viewed the world as having visible, physical properties and nonphysical, unchangeable, nonphysical properties.

The Renaissance

sarahcord14 — 2024-09-03 19:12:06 UTC

After the Dark Ages, Greek thought reemerged with revitalized interest in ideas about reasoning and metaphysical dualism.

Descartes

sarahcord14 — 2024-09-03 19:13:23 UTC

Descartes introduced mind-body dualism and the idea that the material world holds a sense of permanency that nonphysical activities cannot have an affect on. His ideas left us with issues in understanding how psychological activities impact the body, due to the fact that he believed that the mind and body were separate entities, not impacting one another.

Mettrie

sarahcord14 — 2024-09-05 13:21:57 UTC

Introduced monism and the idea that matter can behave, interacting with itself and it's external environment. Viewed thinking and acting as behaviors stemming from the physical makeup of the organism.

Claude Bernard

sarahcord14 — 2024-09-05 13:22:48 UTC

Bernard argued against vitalism, the idea that living things possess a nonphysical force that makes them different from nonliving things. He believed nonliving things operated under the same laws as living things. Proposed that changes in the external environment of living things provokes a reaction to keep the internal environment constant.

Walter Cannon

sarahcord14 — 2024-09-05 13:23:44 UTC

Cannon coined the term homeostasis, the process of maintaining a consistent internal state, despite environmental changes.

Hans Selye

sarahcord14 — 2024-09-05 13:24:29 UTC

Selye identified three consistent stress responses - decrease in the size of the thymus gland & other immune system organs, ulcers in the gastrointestinal tract, and the enlargement of the adrenal glands. He labeled this pattern of changes as general adaptation syndrome, which consists of three stages - alarm reaction, resistance, and exhaustion.

Sterling & Eyer

sarahcord14 — 2024-09-05 13:25:33 UTC

Sterling and Eyer introduced the idea of allostasis, the idea that when a stressor does not go away, maintaining homeostasis wears on the system. In an allostatic state, an organism is working towards maintaining homeostasis in response to a stressor.

Stellar & McEwen

sarahcord14 — 2024-09-05 13:25:50 UTC

Stellar and McEwen expanded upon the idea of allostasis and introduced the concept of allostatic load, or the costs of maintaining homeostasis in response to stress over a long period of time such as months or years.