Word: anxiously
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...what health experts call any anxiety that persists to the point that it interferes with one's life--is the most common mental illness in the U.S. In its various forms, ranging from very specific phobias to generalized anxiety disorder, it afflicts 19 million Americans (see "Are You Too Anxious...
...general, science has a hard time pinning down emotions because they are by nature so slippery and subjective. You can't ask a rat if it's anxious or depressed. Even most people are as clueless about why they have certain feelings as they are about how their lungs work. But fear is the one aspect of anxiety that's easy to recognize. Rats freeze in place. Humans break out in a cold sweat. Heartbeats race, and blood pressure rises. That gives scientists something they can control and measure. "You can bring on a sensory stimulus that makes an animal...
Another type of brain scan tells scientists which brain cells are using the most oxygen or soaking up the most nutrients. The idea, explains Dr. Scott Rauch of Massachusetts General Hospital, is that any area that seems more active than usual while someone is anxious may play an important role in making the person that way. Rauch's team has spent the past eight years scanning groups of combat veterans, some with post-traumatic stress disorder and some without, to see which areas of the brain light up when they hear tapes recounting their most troubling memories...
...environment, play in the development of anxiety. "It has been known for some time that these disorders run in families," says Kenneth Kendler, a psychiatric geneticist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. "So the next logical question is the nature-nurture issue." In other words, are anxious people born that way, or do they become anxious as a result of their life experiences...
There is plenty to learn about how anxiety and fear shape the brain. One of the biggest mysteries is the relationship between anxiety and depression. Researchers know that adults who suffer from depression were often very anxious as children. (It's also true that many kids outgrow their anxiety disorders to become perfectly well-adjusted adults.) Is that just a coincidence, as many believe, or does anxiety somehow prime the brain to become depressed later in life? Brain scans show that the amygdala is very active in depressed patients, even when they are sleeping. Studies of twins suggest that many...