Did you know that being stressed out could cause brain damage?

These are the findings from Dr. Klaus Miczek, a Tufts University psychologist. He found a way to replicate bullying for rodents. By placing a larger and aggressive rat in a cage with younger rats, Miczek observed how the more aggressive rat pushed and abused the younger rats.

Those younger rats produced more stress hormones called corticosterone. He also found that his hormone could stay in the brain long after the incident. For young and developing brains of children, such stress creates a higher propensity for drug abuse, alcoholism, anxiety and depression.

Dr. Miczek found that four different incidents, of only five minutes each, had a lasting effect on the rats. In children with higher stress hormones, the immune system is weaker and memory is challenged. Bullying in humans kills nerve cells.

Therefore, those who face bullying for years are not only enduring the abuse at the time, the targets are compromising healthy brain activity to stay in an abusive situation.

For more information on this neuroscience research, please visit Brainfacts.org http://www.brainfacts.org/in-society/in-society/articles/2015/bullying-and-the-brain

Read more posts by Leah Hollis, Ed.D. here. Leah is a contributing blogger for JenningsWire.