Want to pass that exam? Plunge your hand in an ice bucket
THE STRESS TEST by Professor Ian Robertson (Bloomsbury £16.99)
ON AN April morning in 1986, as university tutor Brian Keenan walked to work along a Beirut street, his path was blocked by an old Mercedes. Four gunmen got out and forced him into the car, ordering him to lie on the floor.
Keenan refused. He neither obeyed nor fought back: instead, he bowed his head, resting it on a kidnapper’s knees. ‘This seemed to cause much confusion,’ he noted later with satisfaction.
Held hostage by Islamic fundamentalists, Keenan waged a constant war of resistance, exerting all the control he could, even while blindfolded and chained. He emerged after four and a half years, physically weak but mentally stronger than he had ever been.
This story supplies the key to Ian Robertson’s study of why some people are broken by traumatic events, while others take inspiration from their trials. The Dublin neuroscientist and psychology professor has been fascinated throughout his career by the effects that thoughts and emotions can have on our little grey cells.
His excellent 1999 book Mind Sculpture explored how constant use can expand specific portions of the brain, just as exercise makes muscles grow bigger. Learn a language, a musical instrument, or Braille, and — as your cortex is stimulated — it will change and grow. Experiences rewire the brain.
And if the experience is bad, the effect can be catastrophic. A single disaster, such as a burglary or a beating, can permanently change the personality, leaving the victim a wreck — sometimes afraid to leave the house, or even suicidal.
Drawing on case histories from his 40-year career, Robertson methodically analyses different instinctive responses to stress. He produces evidence that pain and anxiety can help us perform better: for instance, a good learning aid is to plunge one hand into a bucket of ice — the discomfort doesn’t merely focus the mind but creates longer, more accurate memories.
Yet one businessman was almost driven to a breakdown by stress after he embarrassed himself by forgetting his speech at a convention.
How can one man be strengthened by his ordeal as a hostage, while another is shattered by public speaking? Robertson argues convincingly that the sensation of control or helplessness is crucial: it shapes the brain.
Popular science writers are prey to two main flaws, laboured analogies and excessive jargon, and Robertson is occasionally guilty of both. The book opens and closes with a heavy-handed parable about computer software which would have been better removed. But these dry patches are rare.
Chapter one, which explains why the world’s most dangerous roads are the straight ones (drivers get bored and drift off the side), includes a 25-question test to assess how absent-minded you are. Chapter three, on how to win a penalty shoot-out (strike the ball to the goalie’s left — keepers dive to the right 70 per cent of the time), reveals how a happy dog wags its tail differently from a stressed-out one.
A study into 33 pairs of identical twins in Sweden shows that the strongest defence against senile dementia is a good education. Too much television, on the other hand, saps the brain and leaves us ‘passive and drowsy’ — bad news for TV critics like me, of course.
And if you wish you could afford to take early retirement... don’t. In France, where many people quit work in their late 50s, mental agility declines steeply after the age of 60. In America, where most people work for another decade, their brains stay as sharp as ever.
Stress, it seems, really is good for you — as long as you feel in control.