Jerusalem: People with anxiety fundamentally perceive the world differently, a new study has found, suggesting that they are not able to distinguish between safe or dangerous situations.
The results show 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-generalisation, researchers said.
"Such plastic changes occur in primary circuits that later mediate the response to new stimuli, resulting in an inability to discriminate between the originally experienced stimulus and a new similar stimulus," he said.
For the study, researchers trained people with anxiety to associate three distinct tones with one of three outcomes - money loss, money gain, or no consequence.
The best strategy was not to mistake (or over-generalise) a new tone for one they had heard in the training phase. But researchers found that people with anxiety were more likely than healthy controls to think that a new tone was actually one of the tones they had heard earlier.
Functional magnetic resonance images (fMRIs) of the brains of people with anxiety versus healthy controls showed differences in brain responses, too.
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."
The findings were published in the journal Current Biology.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The results show 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-generalisation, researchers said.
"Such plastic changes occur in primary circuits that later mediate the response to new stimuli, resulting in an inability to discriminate between the originally experienced stimulus and a new similar stimulus," he said.
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For the study, researchers trained people with anxiety to associate three distinct tones with one of three outcomes - money loss, money gain, or no consequence.
Advertisement
The best strategy was not to mistake (or over-generalise) a new tone for one they had heard in the training phase. But researchers found that people with anxiety were more likely than healthy controls to think that a new tone was actually one of the tones they had heard earlier.
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Functional magnetic resonance images (fMRIs) of the brains of people with anxiety versus healthy controls showed differences in brain responses, too.
Advertisement
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."
Advertisement
The findings were published in the journal Current Biology.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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