The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: How Risk Taking Transforms Us, Body and Mind

by John Coates

Some scientists, recognizing that mental toughness corresponds to a physiological profile, have gone a step further and asked, can this toughness be trained? Can purely physical training regimes translate into emotional stability, mental endurance and improved cognitive performance? Scientists who think the answer is yes have built their research upon a curious finding—that resilience to stress comes from experiencing stress. This idea originated in a lab at Rockefeller run by a psychologist named Neal Miller. Miller was one of the fathers of what is called behavioral medicine, the idea that behavioral therapy can rewire our brain and rebuild our body just as thoroughly as many medications. He and his lab also conducted some pioneering experiments in the physiology of stress. It was in Miller’s lab that two of his students, Bruce McEwen and Jay Weiss, discovered cortisol receptors in the brain, and in the process described the hormone feedback loops between brain and body, which, I have suggested, may be influential in the financial markets. Miller also made some of the first discoveries about toughening. In particular, he and Weiss found that when rats were exposed to chronic (in other words unrelenting) stress they came to suffer both physical illness and learned helplessness, and these were the result of depleted noradrenaline levels in their brains. However, if the rats were exposed to acute (in other words short-lived) stress, even if it was repeated over and over, th...