When good intentions lead to negative outcomes
Allostatic responses are crucial to allow an organism to adapt to a changing environment and cope with perturbations that, if left unchecked, could lead to decreased fitness, or even death. A key point to emphasize is, as in many domains, timing is everything. The responses of the brain and body to environmental challenges need to be well regulated in the temporal domain: activated quickly and only in the appropriate situations, maintained for the duration of the perturbation, and terminated efficiently and effectively. Similarly, these responses may change depending on the life history stage of the organism, making different responses appropriate at different stages of development [4]. Thus, it should be evident that mediators of allostasis can have beneficial effects on fitness when deployed at the appropriate time and in the appropriate manner, but they can have unintended effects when they occur outside these boundaries, thereby interfering with optimal function, and negatively impacting fitness [4]. An interesting exercise is exploring the “Hawk vs Dove” personality types that are seemingly widespread in the animal kingdom, including in humans. Each type can be successful in a range of environmental and social conditions, but not in all. When such a mismatch occurs, the same characteristics that made an individual more resilient in one environment can open them up to a host of vulnerabilities in another [38]. Taken in that context, organisms can show resilience not only in their recovery from stress-induced changes but also by their ability to demonstrate experience-related change [39-41].