Prodrome Science™ — Webinar Series

Stress and the Brain

What is stress actually doing to your brain — and how much of it is in your control? Dr. Dayan Goodenowe explains the neuroscience of stress, anxiety, and depression in plain language, with a neurochemist’s precision and without the jargon.

Dr. Dayan Goodenowe, PhD — Stress and the Brain

What this webinar covers

Dr. Goodenowe opens by challenging the most common assumption about stress: that it comes from the world around you. In his view, stress is not a reaction to an event — it is the anticipation of one. That single reframe, he argues, changes everything about how you manage it.

The webinar moves from that foundation into the actual neuroscience: what the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex are doing under stress, how the brain’s two serotonin systems determine whether you cope or shut down, and how chronic unresolved anxiety becomes depression — and eventually, a risk factor for dementia.

Key ideas — in Dr. Goodenowe’s own words

Stress is anticipation, not reaction. “Stress is anticipation of some future event. Stress is not the event — it’s the anticipation of an event.” According to Dr. Goodenowe, the root of stress is attaching yourself to an outcome you don’t control. His hockey analogy: a goaltender who anticipates the puck gets scored on every time. One who prepares — trains for every possible shot — responds rather than predicts.
Your brain is a tool you program. “Your brain will strengthen functions that benefit a purpose and suppress functions that don’t. It doesn’t care what the purpose is.” In Dr. Goodenowe’s framing, if you train your brain to scan for threats that haven’t happened, it gets better and better at doing exactly that — which is why anxious thinking compounds over time.
Two serotonin systems do opposite things. Dr. Goodenowe describes two key serotonin receptor pathways: one for passive coping (“tolerating a source of stress”) — enhanced by conventional antidepressants — and one for active coping (“actively addressing a source of stress”) — the pathway psychedelics act on. “Too much of a good thing is always bad,” he notes — both in excess create problems.
Anxiety becomes depression when there’s no exit. “Anxiety is the anticipation and fear; depression is ‘I’ve given up because there’s no right answer — there’s no answer at all.’” Dr. Goodenowe uses an animal model to illustrate: a creature that learns to find a safe spot under stress adapts and recovers. Remove every safe spot, and it eventually stops trying and lies there. That, he argues, is the neurological mechanism of depression.
Chronic anxiety shrinks the hippocampus — and raises dementia risk. According to Dr. Goodenowe, anxiety causes hippocampal overactivity and inflammation which, over years, can lead to hippocampal shrinkage and impaired memory formation. “It’s not that anxiety directly causes Alzheimer’s — it shifts your starting line lower.” By seventy, a person with decades of unresolved anxiety may have a smaller hippocampus than average, leaving less reserve capacity as age-related decline begins.
We need stress — the issue is whether we can overcome it. “First and foremost, we need stress to live. There’s no such thing as homeostasis — you’re always changing from one state to another. The issue with stress is the ability to overcome it. Each stressor you’re exposed to and overcome creates resilience.”

How anxiety and depression actually work

One of the most useful parts of the webinar is the Q&A, where Dr. Goodenowe explains the anxiety-to-depression progression using everyday examples that cut through the clinical language.

On anxiety: “Anxiety is always an inward thing.” He uses the example of getting ready for a dinner party — you can spend the whole evening mentally cycling through twenty outfit options, worrying about how you’ll be perceived, and arrive exhausted before anything has even happened. According to Dr. Goodenowe, that mental rehearsal of negative outcomes isn’t preparation — it’s the brain doing exactly what you trained it to do. “If you ask it to run through every negative permutation, it’ll do exactly that, better and better, spinning its wheels as long as you ask it to.”

On how the serotonin system responds to a genuine crisis: Dr. Goodenowe describes what happens when the calming and active pathways fire together — using the example of being in a car crash, injured in a ditch, with fire approaching. The calming system, he explains, temporarily suppresses your awareness of pain and prior memories so the active system can focus entirely on finding an exit. “Forget your leg, fire’s coming, which way do you run?” Once the crisis is resolved and the system calms down, the pain returns. That, in his view, is the serotonergic system working exactly as designed.

On how anxiety becomes depression: Dr. Goodenowe uses an animal model to make this concrete. An animal placed on a platform that delivers mild shocks quickly learns to run to the one safe spot — initial stress, then resolution. Remove the safe spot so every platform delivers a shock, and something changes: “eventually the animal just lies there and gets shocked.” That giving-up state, he argues, is the neurological template for depression. In his words: “Anxiety is the anticipation and fear; depression is ‘I’ve given up because there’s no right answer — there’s no answer at all.’” Depression, according to Dr. Goodenowe, is not a personality trait or a chemical imbalance in isolation — it is what happens when the brain concludes there is no exit.

On the long game: Dr. Goodenowe is careful to note that anxiety does not directly cause Alzheimer’s — but it does erode the buffer you’d otherwise have going into old age. “It’s not that anxiety directly causes Alzheimer’s — it shifts your starting line lower.” Someone with decades of unresolved anxiety arrives at seventy with a smaller hippocampus than their peers, meaning age-related decline starts from a weaker position.

The Q&A section of the webinar is where Dr. Goodenowe gets most concrete. Asked what people can actually do, he focuses less on supplements and more on the fundamentals — and in his view, the most underrated stress reducers are the simplest.

Practical takeaways

What Dr. Goodenowe recommends

Sleep. “Memory and plasticity can only occur in calm states, and sleep is one of the most calm states. Sleep deprivation reproducibly causes memory loss.”
Exercise. “One of the most powerful antidepressants is exercise. It improves blood flow and shifts you toward the parasympathetic system over the sympathetic.”
Purpose beyond yourself. “Making the world a better place is one of the most anxiety-lowering things you can do. It gives you a reason to be and a long-term purpose.” He notes that caring for others — even a pet — relieves stress because it gets you out of your own head.
Third-person perspective. “Learn to look at yourself in the third person, and don’t take the events in your life so personally. If someone’s behaving badly, let them feel those feelings; don’t internalize them.”
Brain nutrition. According to Dr. Goodenowe, an inflamed brain is a hyperactive brain — “hyperactivity is the opposite of what we want for calm, learning, and long-term planning.” Supporting mitochondrial health and reducing neuroinflammation are part of his broader restorative approach.

To watch the full webinar, visit Dr. Goodenowe’s website: Watch Dr. Goodenowe’s Full Stress & Brain Webinar ↗

Want to learn more about Dr. Goodenowe’s research or explore how this applies to you?

Get In Touch →

► Learn more about Dr. Goodenowe