Operating on a fixed budget of fuel, the brain has evolved to shift energy resources as necessary, meaning that mental processing is competitive. It’s simply not possible to have all of our neurons firing at once, so if one structure is active, it must come at the expense of another. One of the problems with chronic stress is that if the HPA axis is guzzling all the fuel to keep the system on alert, the thinking parts of the brain are being robbed of energy.
