The relevance of poor stress management to academic performance is worth emphasizing. Stress not only affects our moods and emotions, but it also impacts the ability to learn.

Both cognitive and affective systems in the brain are interconnected.

The figures above show the major parts of the brain that are central to learning: the hippocampus which is involved in processing information and memory; the amygdala which is also involved with enhancement of memory; and the pre-frontal cortex, largely involved with reasoning, judgment, planning and higher-level executive functions.

While these parts are central, many other parts of the brain are involved as well.

Under stress, the same areas are affected albeit in ways that diminish attention and other executive functions and interfere with learning and memory, especially when emotions are strong. Chronic stress and poor emotional wellbeing affect the executive functions first and foremost, and in the words of Adele Diamond, the distinguished research professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience in Canada, “They can make you appear to have a disorder of executive functions, such as ADHD, when you do not. You can see the deleterious effects of stress, sadness, loneliness, and lack of physical health or fitness at the physiological and neuroanatomical level in prefrontal cortex and at the behavioral level in poorer reasoning and problem-solving, forgetting things, and impaired ability to exercise discipline and self-control.”

“If we want schoolchildren, workers, or business executives to have better attention and concentration, be better able to reason and problem solve, we cannot ignore stresses in their lives.”