View all slides | Contents of this slide

Lecture Notes

The first phase of the general adaptation syndrome is alarm reaction, and here we're talking about a biological reaction that occurs in immediate response to a stressor to prepare the body for intense physical activity, and the simple goal here is protecting oneself against danger, and we call this the "fight or flight" response because it affects nearly every part of our body, and it's preparing our body for intense physical activity such as fighting or fleeing, hence the "fight or flight" response. And this response involves the autonomic nervous system, and specifically it uses the sympathetic part of that nervous system that you just learned about in the video, and this part of the nervous system controls our bodily functions that occur without conscious thought. This response also initiates changes in our hormonal system called the neuroendocrine system, and you can see in the figure on the right-hand side of this slide the many parts of the nervous system and the body that are involved in creating this fight or flight response. In the grey boxes you can see the response results in increased alertness, increased heart rate, increased conversion of sugar to glucose to provide the muscles with the extra energy they need for that intense physical activity, and all this occurs as an immediate response to a stressor that's created by the sympathetic nervous system. Alternatively, once that stressor has been removed or the person successfully deals with that stressor, the body tries to return itself to homeostasis, so the parasympathetic nervous system is activated and is responsible for the relaxation response.