Anxiety Flashcards
influences and physiological, chemical and cognitive features (22 cards)
Define Anxiety
A generalised fear caused by anticipation of danger.
DSM5: Sleep disturbances, irritablity, fatugue, difficulty concentrating.
Social, generalised, panic, PTSD
Symtoms of Anxiety
sweating, heart beats quickly, mouth goes dry
the body gets reafy for action, adrenaline, liver releases glucose for energy
Anxiety in the brain
marked by increased activation in the amygdala and decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex.
involves two main pathways: low and high road
High Road
ear → thalamus → cortex → amygdala.
It is longer, slower and indirect, but provides more detailed information about the stimulus, and allows conscious awareness and assessment of it.
High road in Anxiety
Under reaction: reduced activity in frontal areas of the brain.
Failure to regulate emotional responese
Evidence of high road
Indovina: showed there was a negative relationship between the activation of the frontal lobe and anxiety scores but there was a positve relationship between amygdala and anxiety scores
High road criticism
Individual differences
Gunther: e.g. high cognitive control or have a resiliance = reliance on high road
heightened sensitivity = reliance on low road
Gunther (2020)
Low Road
provides a short cut directly from the thalamus to the amygdala = rapid response to threat.
e.g. “fight or flight” situations: our hearts will start pumping faster way before we consciously assess the nature of the threat.
Low road in anxiety
leads to overreaction if not regulated by GABA (neurotransmitter that acts as a inhibitorty signal).
Evidence of low road
Kaldewgi: anxious people showed a similar activation (high) activation of amygdala regardless of theintensity of the threat.
Control only had an activation to the fear stimulus.
Criticism of low road
(Kaldewaji’ study)
anxious people may be feeling scared throughout the whole study e.g. being in a new environment, speaking to the exaiminer.
Nurochenmistry and GABA:
inhibitory role by regualatibg the activity of the amygdala
when deficient: emotional response is amplified.
Anti-anxiety
works by promoting GABA effects by blocking ist reuptake or increasing its effects on receptors.
Anti-anxiety medication
Benzodiazepines
Enhances GABA → increases chloride ions → neuron depolarisation → reduced amydgala activation.
Criticism of neurochemsitry and Benzodiazepines
Barrett: anxiwty is actually the braib generating predictions about the sensory inputs, paired with past experiences and situational contexts (a predicitce coding model of the brain)
Support for the predicitive coding model of the brain
fMRI has shown that brain activity of emotions is distributed across brain regions, with the intensity and pattern of the emotion being controlled by different experiences.
This means that emotions, e.g. anxiety, are not just pre-existing states that can be triggered by a particular region or neurotransmitter.
Cognitive performance and anxiety
Memory retrieval: sensitive to emotional context
attention + focus
Negativity bias
Anxious people are more likely to show a biases towards remembering and showing attention to things that causes a traumatic or bad experience
Negativity bias and Memory retrival and attention
Lee: higher levels of anxity correlated with higher levels of recall when the stumili was percieved as threatening or scary.
Increased reaction time when the probe aligned with the threat cue
viscious cyle…only focus on negtaive, only remember negative
Crticism of cogntive performance
Only shows relationship, casaulity cannot be established.
Especially because ‘anxiety’ is so diverse, is the same threat cue used for both social and PTSD? Would it have the same effect?
