If you suffer from anxiety, you probably have a harder time dealing with life’s uncertainties.
But don’t worry, it’s not a reflection on you.
It’s a reflection on your brain.
Hey guys, Amy here with you on DNews today, and let’s be honest, the only thing worse
than anxiety is when anxiety makes you anxious.
Turns out, it’s a bit of a cycle.
A team of scientists from the University of California Berkeley and the University of
Oxford recently studied how people respond to unpredictability and they found that those
prone to high anxiety have a harder time reading social and environmental cues that could help
them avoid a negative outcome.
Imagine if a longtime friend were to suddenly lash out at you.
Mood swings might be normal for your friend, or their outburst might be indicative that
your friendship is deteriorating.
If you’re prone to anxiety, you might not be able to draw from your years of friendship
to know how to react to avoid making things worse.
It comes down to a glitch in the brain's decision-making circuitry, which is typically indicative of
anxiety disorders.
Processing incoming information and drawing on past experiences from memories are vital
in decision-making, as are using logic and probability.
We have to draw conclusions from past events to determine the best course of action now.
But these same parts of the brain are involved in anxiety reactions.
Key parts of the brain that produce fear and anxiety include the amygdala and the hippocampus.
Scientists think the amygdala acts as a communications point between the parts of the brain that
process incoming sensory signals and the parts that interpret these signals.
Emotional memories are also stored in the amygdala.
The hippocampus encodes past threatening events like a near fall from a rooftop into these
memories.
The memories and experiences the amygdala draws on can trigger an anxiety response.
We all have amygdalas, hippocampuses, and memories, so why do some of us experience
anxiety more than others?
Some people are genetically predisposed to anxiety, naturally unable to create some mood-controlling
neurotransmitters -- chemicals that give your brain information about how you should react
and act in a situation.
For other people, anxiety is linked to hormone imbalance.
To see how anxiety affects decision-making, this UC Berkeley and Oxford team put 31 young
and middle-aged adults with a wide range of baseline anxiety levels through a simple test.
Participants were seated in front of a computerized, two-armed bandit style terminal.
They were then asked to pick between two shapes, one of which would give them a mild electrical
shock when selected.
The goal was for participants to keep a mental log of which shapes most often delivered electrical
shocks and avoid choosing those shapes.
The challenge was that the shocking shapes changed, sometimes frequently and other times
not for a while.
Regardless of shape change rate, highly anxious people had more trouble avoiding shocks than
their less anxious counterparts.
The researchers also tracked subjects’ eyes and noticed anxious people had less pupil
dilation when they received a shock.
Pupil dilation is often a response to an unfamiliar and possibly hostile situation.
It indicates alertness and a readiness to act.
The fact that their pupils stayed small suggests that they were unable to adapt quickly.
On the whole, participants prone to anxiety were simply less adept at taking in the new
information about their environment and processing the rapidly changing game, a response that
they would likely carry over in their regular lives.
So this study helps to explain WHY anxious people crumble in the face of uncertainty
- but what can be done to avoid that?
More research is clearly needed.
So, has all this made you more aware of being anxious as it has me?
Let us know in the comments below or you can find me and let me know directly on Twitter
as @astVintageSpace.
And don’t forget to subscribe for more DNews every day of the week.