Some of the most important decisions you will make in your lifetime will occur while you feel stressed and anxious.

From medical decisions to financial and professional ones, we are often required to weigh up information under stressful conditions. Take for example expectant parents who need to make a series of important choices during pregnancy and labour – when many feel stressed. Do we become better or worse at processing and using information under such circumstances?

My colleague Neil Garrett, now at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute in New Jersey, and I ventured from the safety of our lab to fire stations in the state of Colorado to investigate how the mind operates under high stress.

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