Wednesday, March 9, 2016

"People with anxiety may be hard-wired to see world differently"

Fox News:  Researchers designed a sound experiment to explore the brain's "plasticity," or its ability to change and respond to new situations. These changes influence how the brain reacts to stimuli and whether the person is able to distinguish between safe or dangerous circumstances, said lead author Rony Paz of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.
"Our study suggests that people with anxiety cannot discriminate, at the most basic level, between stimuli that have an emotional content and similar mundane or daily stimuli," Paz said by email.
"This in turn might explain the anxious response that they exhibit to scenarios that seem regular, normal or non-emotional to anyone else - their brain cannot discriminate and responds as if it is the anxious stimulus," Paz added. (click for more)

1 comment:

ricpic said...

It's a very pernicious doctrine that people are rendered helpless by their nervousness (for lack of a better term) and can't distinguish between the uncomfortable and the truly threatening. People have agency. It's probably the most important thing they have. But where would experts be if they couldn't convince people that they are helpless and therefore need experts?