Your Body Calms Down Fast — Your Brain Doesn’t
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Winding Down: After a moment of stress, you can actually feel your body start to calm down. Your heart rate and breathing slow. Your palms stop sweating. But research indicates that it actually takes the body longer to fully recover from stressful situations than we probably realize.
The Study: Researchers tracked brain activity in around 100 participants before, during, and after a stressful task using EEG and fMRI. Heart rate and cortisol levels dropped to normal quickly, but it took about 60 minutes for the brain’s salience network — the part that detects danger or stress — to finally calm down and get back to its default resting state.
The Takeaway: The transition from the salient state back to default mode is called the resilience window. The researchers found people with depression didn’t bounce back after stress quite as well. Their shift from stress to recovery wasn’t as pronounced. Researchers say protecting that hour-long resilience window by avoiding overstimulation or overloading with new tasks is crucial for getting back to a resting state.
Keep In Mind: This was a small study, but it illustrates that even when the body feels back to normal, the brain may still be in the de-stressing process.
