The Fear And Anxiety Of The Brain

This analysis persists of key points, about The article “Stress and the brain by Janet Elder”. The author forged an excellent informative piece to educate the reader on the effects of stress on the brain. The author states that “Stress can be both good and bad. It is part of life, and your brain and body respond to it”. The author clarifies that, "Whether stress is harmful or helpful depends on the amount of stress, how severe it is, and how long it lasts".

The definition of fear has proved to be an elusive mystery plaguing scientists. While there is much agreement as to the physiological effects of fear, the neural pathways and connections that bring upon these effects are not well understood. From the evolutionary standpoint, the theory is that fear is a neural circuit that has been designed to keep the organism alive in dangerous situations (1). How does it all work? Learning and responding to stimuli that warn of danger involves neural pathways that send information about the outside world to the amygdala, which in turn, determines the significance of the stimulus and triggers emotional responses like freezing or fleeing as well as changes

The test will be conducted at the 0.05 level of significance. The correlation coefficient indicates a relationship between hours of study and exam anxiety for the sample tested. The r-value of 0.5654 indicates a positive linear correlation. With a 0.05 alpha and a df of 8, the PPMC table gives a value of 0.632. The two-tailed is significant at the 0.05 level of significance and there is a positive correlation between the number of study hours and the anxiety scores of students.

Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001). The RMET is a 36 item task used to assess participants ability to infer the mental state of others or ToM. It consists of 36 images of the eye region displaying a wide range of positive, negative and complex expressions of emotions. Participants must select which of the four words presented best describes the emotion portrayed in the image. Higher scores indicate a greater capacity to understand the mental states of others. There is evidence for reliability and validity of the RMET as a measure of ToM (Baron-Cohen et al.,

The article, Concussive brain injury enhances fear learning and excitatory processes in the amygdala by Maxine L. Reger, Andrew M. Poulos, Floyd Buen, Christopher C. Giza, David A. Hovda, and Michael S Fanselow took a close look into the fears and behaviors generated in rats two days after suffering trauma to the brain. This particular article was discovered by searching the keywords: brain injury and amygdala, in the PubMed database. By searching those keywords, the database was able to pull up numerous articles discussing the two topics, but I felt that Reger et al (2012) demonstrated a clear association between the topics. The article brings about a question of whether or not there is a link between brain injuries, posttraumatic stress disorder, commonly referred to as PTSD, and the changes involved in the excitatory and inhibitory processes involved in the amygdala. In order to examine such a link, the authors performed a number of tests on adult Sprague-Dawley rats to test their hypothesis as well as to investigate the neurobiological correlation between concussion and PTSD. To further assess these correlations, it is imperative to explore the methods used to conduct this study.

Norepinephrine is a Neurotransmitter that helps control alertness and arousal. According to the psychology textbook not getting enough norepinephrine can cause us to be depressed. Depression can cause us to not feel like doing anything and feel like we don’t matter. According to study.com norepinephrine causes an increase in the amount of oxygen going to our brain which allows us to think better and faster. Also our heart rate increases making our muscles work faster. According to the neurogenesis website norepinephrine is found in the symphathic nervous system. Another common name for norepinephrine is noradrenaline. According to the book the symphathic nervous system is an autonomic nervous system subdivision that will arouse you, make you

What makes the anxiety vary from fear is that it is not focused on a specific event or object, and the person is not aware of the cause of unpleasant emotions. Depressing feeling, mood state, helplessness, hopelessness, followed by feelings of guilt, sadness, inadequacy is also affective reactions. Similarly anxiety that is experienced as a feeling of fear, but without an objective danger, depression is most easily be understood as a feeling of sadness, grief, for no apparent reason.

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, roughly 40 million American adults suffer from one form of anxiety disorder or another, with only about one-third of those sufferers getting treatment despite the fact that many of disorders can be treated with pharmaceutical drugs. For example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft are two of the most common forms of drugs used to treat anxiety-related disorders, along with tranquilizers such as such as Valium and Xanax. Not always effective, these drugs can have adverse effects and tranquilizers can be extremely addictive. These factors have created a void for alternative forms of treatment, and this is where cannabis comes into play. The non-psychoactive

Reptilian Coping Brain- Instinctive survival- Survival is an automatic response for our brain. Aggression helps show that we are stronger by using aggressive behavior. Fear helps us to avoid threats or deaths. Revenge is the coping brain trying to get back at other people who have hurt us. Tribalism and territorial behavior is how the reptilian coping brain joins forces with others. Reproductive instinct is why we have an instinctive urge deep in our body and brain that drives us to duplicate ourselves.

Fear is an inevitable bodily defense mechanism that has been around since the beginning of human evolution. Every human being experiences fear intermittently throughout their lifetime, In some, their fear(s) are so severe that they interfere with daily activities. An irrationalfear of an object, situation, or activity that a person feels obligated to avoid isconsidered a phobia (1). The word “phobia” originates from the Greek word "Phóbos" that translates as morbid fear (5). Phobias present themselves in different intensities. For example, one person may show negligible symptoms of claustrophobia while another could be completely conspicuous and avoid enclosed spaces altogether.Studies show that the reason for phobiasto arise comes

I enjoyed the thoroughness of your forum post this week. I have heard anxiety referred to many times as a normal human reaction to a stressful situation. Personally, I found this week’s reading and forum assignment interesting. I agree that everyone deals with anxiety from time to time, I know that I have, however when you see someone who has a chronic anxiety disorder the difference is drastically apparent. I live with a person who has a chronic anxiety disorder and it has really helped me to see and understand anxiety in a way that is impossible to learn from a book. Prior to this week’s reading, I did not know that anxiety has such a high rate of heritability. I guess it makes sense that anxiety is an illness that can inherited,

A Psychology disorder known as anxiety disorder, is the most common in the United States. In a result of, 18% of 40 million people suffers from anxiety. However, there are six different types of anxiety disorders in the results of stress, depression, social interaction, obsessive compulsive, and phobia. Which characteristic functions as a natural part of life, that can be treated thought several methods.

In her interview, Dr.Kerr discusses the brain's response to fear. A few people revel in fear, while others do not. It is much less common to believe that people would take joy in fear, however; having been found that, “the natural high from the fight-or-flight response can make one feel wonderful.” As a result of fear causing one to feel tremendous, they also savor the high of the fight-or-flight. Fear goers response to the natural high of fight-or-flight, is what makes them enjoy fear. Also, the fear goers responses, reveal one way they dote on fear. In addition to enjoying the high, a mass of people also “ enjoy frightening situations considering, it leaves them with a sense of confidence after it is over.” People are fond of fear just for the simple fact that after they face it, they suddenly have more confidence afterwards. There are those who like fear, while there are others that seem to fear abnormality. Being able to face those fears brought upon, strengthens the mind and allows it to enjoy fear as others cannot. In spite of brain’s having their own intake on fear, cultures also share similar qualities of fear. In particular, our cultures can vary what one’s fear is. For instance, “we know that we can learn to fear, and this means our socialization and the society in which we are raised is going to have a huge deal to do with what we find horrifying.” With that being said, if one’s culture is use to seeing certain things that other people might

Understanding the Anxious Mind is an article that immediately stood out to me as I scrolled through the readings as it truly sheds light on a very important topic, personally, that was presented in class, and that is the possibility that anxiety might in fact be unavoidable and predisposed in certain individuals. In this article we are introduced to Jerome Kagan, a psychology professor at the Harvard school conducting a longitudinal study on temperament and its effects over time; his test subjects being no more than a child of four months at the start of the study in order to avoid the possibility of outside factors affecting results. Although the professor attempted the same study on 19 babies, 18 were seemingly unaffected by the stimuli presented

What is an anxiety disorder?- Anxiety is “a mental health disorder characterized by feelings of worry or fear that are strong enough to interfere with one's daily activities...” Anxiety disorders involve more than temporary fear or worry. There are numerous disorders involving anxiety, which includes: social phobia, panic disorder, separation anxiety disorder, etc.