Written by Hanan Roble, Wellbeing Panel Member for the Awarding Gap Project
Ever feel like your brain stops working during exam season? It is important to understand that this is not a personal failing, or you not being able to ‘get a grip’, that’s stress doing exactly what it’s designed to do. Recognising that stress is a biological response can help students feel understood and less alone in their experience. The idea that stress is just ’emotional’ is an incredibly limited way of perceiving stress, and its biological effects on the body, more particularly the brain, are profound.
Stress is a biological response. When your brain perceives a challenge, such as an upcoming exam or deadline, it performs a stress appraisal to assess the threat. If the threat feels significant, your body triggers a fight-or-flight response, releasing hormones like cortisol and adrenaline that increase heart rate and trigger rapid physiological changes.
It is easiest to recognise the physical impacts of stress on your body: increased heart rate, sweating, an achy feeling of ‘impending doom’, and sleep troubles. Your behaviour might change too: you’re eating habits, for example, or you may withdraw from others or behave entirely differently from how you would act otherwise.
Stress is not always terrible for you. Short-term or ‘acute’ stress is a temporary process, which is crucial for getting through challenges. Have a presentation to do in front of a big audience? An assignment you’ve been procrastinating on? Short-term stress can be a positive, even motivating, way to help improve your focus and capability to meet these challenges (Thank you, acute stress!). Long-term, or ‘chronic’ stress, however, is not so helpful. It comes with ongoing, persistent stresses such as back-to-back tight deadlines over a long period, financial troubles, or balancing the demands of your university degree and a part-time job. It is the sustained and persistent activation of the stress response system. Prolonged exposure to stress hormones, leads to exhaustion, a weakened immune system (ever noticed how you might catch a cold during exam season?) and may ultimately result in a chronic state of physical and mental exhaustion, also known as burnout. Recognising this can empower students to take control of their stress management.
But our key question today is: what does stress do to the brain? Firstly, long-term stress can impact the memory centre of your brain: your hippocampus. Persistent exposure to elevated cortisol actually damages the hippocampus by ultimately reducing its volume. It significantly hinders a process called neurogenesis, the creation of new neurons (which you need for forming new memories!). This impact on your hippocampus makes it even more difficult to retain and retrieve crucial information (that one topic you went through yesterday? POOF! Completely disappeared). It is also associated with blanking in exams and being unable to remember the answer to a question on a topic you swear you learned. And it is not just the hippocampus that is impacted by this chronic exposure to stress, but also your prefrontal cortex and amygdala. Your prefrontal cortex is crucial for functions recognised as ‘higher-order executive functions’ such as attention and cognitive flexibility; therefore, the impact chronic stress has on your prefrontal cortex is that it impairs your ability to perform a process known as ‘attention set-shifting’ i.e. switching focus between tasks. Your amygdala is widely recognised as the brain’s primary emotional centre. It plays an important role in associating certain stimuli with emotional responses. When you are experiencing long-term stress, the amygdala becomes more reactive, leading to increased anxiety and irritability. What we can conclude from this is that chronic stress really does a number on your brain!
As discussed, long-term stress is not ideal during exam season, so actively managing it is essential. Break down your revision into smaller parts, take regular breaks, and reach out for support. The Awarding Gap Project Wellbeing Workstream creates spaces where students feel supported through our campaigns and initiatives, such as our Reflective Pop-Up in March where we supported students observing Ramadan and Lent, so don’t hesitate to reach out during this busy time.
About Hanan Roble
Hanan is a Wellbeing Panel Member for the Awarding Gap Project, where she collaborates on wellbeing initiatives to ensure all students feel supported and represented. She has a strong interest in neuroscience and in how stress affects the brain, and is passionate about making wellbeing support more accessible.
