Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: Anxiety is a subjectively rather unpleasant emotional state accompanied by typical physiological symptoms, such as increased heart rate, respiration rate, and enhanced electrodermal reactivity.It is usually accompanied by concerns and worries as well as the desire to withdraw or hide away or otherwise protect oneself, although many different forms exist.For some individuals, feelings of anxiety can become so predominant and overwhelming that medical and psychological treatment is needed to help gain control and manage everyday life.On the other hand, in view of evolution, anxiety is a very important and life-saving emotion that prepares body and cognition for adaptive actions and reactions.It is only in our modern industrial societies, where acute threats to life rarely exist in a direct form that can be tackled with physical reactions, that anxiety becomes a psychological and medical problem, as Robert Sapolsky (1998) has stressed in his book "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers".It is therefore often forgotten, particularly amongst clinicians and patients, but also amongst researchers, that anxiety is an adaptive, protective behavioral motive that influences our choices and actions in a beneficial way.Studying conditions of lacking or pathologically reduced anxiety can be vital for understanding the functional role of anxiety.Among them are sociopathy (Hare, 1965;Hare, 1998;Flor, Birbaumer, Hermann, Ziegler, & Patrick, 2002) and particular forms of brain damage, particularly individuals with traumatic injury to the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a structure that is known to both control and release fear reactions depending on context and higher cognitive evaluation (Kringelbach & Rolls, 2004;Wallis, 2007).A vital description of such cases has been given by Damasio (1994): The patients show impulsiveness, irritability, reduced emotion control, lack of tact and sensitivity, lack of steadiness and reliability, difficulties in planning and goal-related behavior.As the OFC is one of the last brain structures to mature during ontogenesis, children and adolescents often display behaviors that are reminiscent to that of these patients (Spear, 2000).Research investigating the underlying cognitive and brain dynamics has stressed the fact that patients with damage to the OFC are less able or less willing than healthy individuals to make predictions about future rewards and
Authors: Martina Kirsch, Sabine Windmann
Institution: Goethe University Frankfurt
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2182226326