Handling stress: a biological view

Results of the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) exams were released last week. Whether students did well or not, there's a benefit. Their results will provide admission tutors evidence of their academic ability that should support the grades they present to colleges for admission.

Students who didn't fare as well can view the exams as practice for the IB or A-levels, whose results will count towards college admission.

When viewed that way, the exam itself has a purpose.

"Children benefit from competition that they have prepared for intensely, especially when viewed as an opportunity to gain recognition for their efforts and improve for the next time," says Dr Rena Subotnik, director of the Centre for Gifted Education Policy for the American Psychological Association.

The reasons for a student's success can be many, but intense preparation is chief among them. Stress is always a factor when sitting exams, leading some of my students to ask a common question: are some students hard-wired to handle stress better than others? Why do some students perform better under stress and why are others paralysed by it?

IGCSE students who have studied enzymes and genes in biology will understand the significance of the enzyme Catechol-O-Methytransferase (COMT) as a major step in how catecholamines - which are released during stress - are broken down in the brain. One of these catecholamines is dopamine, a chemical that transmits information through the nervous system. The COMT gene codes have an effect on removing dopamine, which, in turn, weakens the electronic signal.

A study by Dr Chang Chun-yen, director of the science education centre at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, compared scores on the National Basic Competency Test of 779 young teenagers from four schools with each student's COMT genetic make-up.