Photo: flickr
The new study shows that people diagnosed with anxiety are less able to distinguish between a neutral, "safe" stimulus (in this case, the sound of a tone) and one that was earlier associated with the threat of money loss or gain. In other words, when it comes to emotional experiences, they show a behavioral phenomenon known as over-generalization, the researchers say.
In the study, Paz and his colleagues trained people with anxiety to associate three distinct tones with one of three outcomes: money loss, money gain, or no consequence. In the next phase, study participants were presented with one of 15 tones and were asked whether they'd heard the tone before in training or not. If they were right, they were rewarded with money.
The findings might help to explain why some people are more prone to anxiety than others, although the underlying brain plasticity that leads to anxiety isn't in itself "bad," Paz says.
"Anxiety traits can be completely normal, and even beneficial evolutionarily. Yet an emotional event, even minor sometimes, can induce brain changes that might lead to full-blown anxiety," he says.
Category(s):Anxiety
Source material from Cell Press
