{"id":224924,"date":"2025-11-12T01:17:27","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T07:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/its-not-just-in-your-head-stress-may-lead-to-altered-blood-flow-in-the-brain"},"modified":"2025-11-12T01:17:27","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T07:17:27","slug":"its-not-just-in-your-head-stress-may-lead-to-altered-blood-flow-in-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/its-not-just-in-your-head-stress-may-lead-to-altered-blood-flow-in-the-brain","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s not just in your head: Stress may lead to altered blood flow in the brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/its-not-just-in-your-head-stress-may-lead-to-altered-blood-flow-in-the-brain2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While the exact causes of neurodegenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer\u2019s and dementia are still largely unknown, researchers have been able to identify a key characteristic in affected brains: reduced blood flow. Building upon this foundational understanding, a team at Penn State recently found that a rare neuron that is extremely vulnerable to anxiety-induced stress appears to be responsible for regulating blood flow and coordinating neural activity in mice.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers found that eliminating type-one nNOS neurons\u2014which make up less than 1% of the brain\u2019s 80 billion neurons and die off when exposed to too much stress\u2014resulted in a drop in both blood flow and <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/electrical+activity\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">electrical activity<\/a> in mice\u2019s brains, demonstrating the impact this neuron type has on the proper brain functions of animals, including humans.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/elifesciences.org\/articles\/105649\" target=\"_blank\">research<\/a> appears in <i>eLife<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the exact causes of neurodegenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer\u2019s and dementia are still largely unknown, researchers have been able to identify a key characteristic in affected brains: reduced blood flow. Building upon this foundational understanding, a team at Penn State recently found that a rare neuron that is extremely vulnerable to anxiety-induced stress appears [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224924\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}