Brain Changes Due to Anxiety

Your brain changes in response to how you think and what you think about. Prolonged periods of anxiety bring about brain changes. Changes that are reversible. As your brain changes how and what you think about also changes. Understanding a little of the science behind what is going on between your ears will give you more options to overcoming your anxiety.

• Neuroplasticity enables the brain to change its functioning and form new habits of thought. This means that through repetitive action or thought, new neural pathways can be built. This process takes time, as the brain has been practising its current way of anxious thinking for a long time. Anyone can heal their anxiety, as the human brain is always capable of making healthy changes.
• However, anxiety can become problematic when we respond to anxiety in ways that prevent us from living a full life or take our mind’s problem-solving rules literally. Genetics play a small role in mental health diagnoses, and someone with a biological tendency toward vigilance may not develop an anxiety disorder if they are raised in a nurturing family.
• Experiences and the way we think and behave also shape the circuits of our brain. We can remodel our brains to respond differently to anxiety, no matter our age.
• Anxiety starts with the sensory receptors (eyes, ears, nose). When the brain interprets an experience as anxiety, a cycle starts that increases the level of arousal. For example, neurons in the brain stem fire more intensely upon hearing a doorbell. Neurotransmitters like norepinephrine send messages to parts of the brain. The sympathetic nervous system is then stimulated and releases adrenaline and other hormones, increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing.
• Two separate pathways in the brain can give rise to anxiety: the cortex pathway and the amygdala pathway. Recognising these two pathways and handling each effectively is essential to reducing anxiety.
• The cortex pathway involves sensations, thoughts, logic, imagination, intuition, conscious memory and planning, and can be triggered by thoughts and images of the risks of a situation. For example, leaving the stove on all day can cause anxiety to arise in the cortex pathway. Anxiety treatment typically targets this pathway because we tend to be more aware of what’s happening in this pathway and have more access to what this part of the brain is remembering and focusing on.
• The amygdala pathway travels more directly through the amygdala, triggering the fight-or-flight response. For example, information travelling through the amygdala pathway ensures a quick reaction to avoid a car accident. This pathway can create the powerful physical effects that anxiety has on the body.
• When anxiety arises in the amygdala pathway, it can feel like it comes out of nowhere and creates strong physiological responses that seem out of proportion to the situation.
• The amygdala is small but is made up of thousands of circuits of cells dedicated to different purposes, including influencing love, bonding, sexual behaviour, anger, aggression, and fear. The amygdala’s role is to attach emotional significance to situations or objects and to form emotional memories. These emotions and emotional memories can be positive or negative.
• Although the cortex can initiate or contribute to anxiety, the amygdala is required to trigger the anxiety response.
• The amygdala can influence the cortex by causing the release of chemicals that influence the entire brain, including the cortex. These chemicals can literally change the way you think.
• The frontal lobes are the largest set of lobes in the human brain. They are located directly behind the forehead and eyes, and receive information from all of the other lobes and put it together to allow us to respond to an integrated experience of the world.
• The frontal lobes are said to have executive functions, meaning that they are where the supervision of many brain processes occurs. The frontal lobes help us anticipate the results of situations, plan our actions, initiate responses, and use feedback from the world to stop or change our behaviour. However, these capacities can also lay the groundwork for anxiety to develop.
• Because of our highly developed frontal lobes, humans have the ability to predict future events and imagine their consequences, which can lead to worry.
• The amygdala pathway can create anxiety without your conscious knowledge or control. Your awareness of the amygdala is likely based on your experience of its effects, namely bodily changes, nervousness, wanting to avoid a certain situation, or having aggressive impulses.
• The lateral nucleus of the amygdala creates emotional memories based on experiences. Because of these memories, you might consciously feel discomfort, fear, or dread.
• A central law underlying neural circuits in the brain is “neurons that fire together wire together”. When it comes to amygdala-based anxiety, connections between neurons are made when sensory information about an object or situation is processed by neurons in the lateral nucleus of the amygdala simultaneously as something threatening happens to excite the amygdala.
• The term “trigger” refers to anything (event, object, sound, smell, and so on) that activates the amygdala’s alarm system as a result of association-based learning. Triggers are an important aspect of how the amygdala functions.
• Research has shown that in those suffering from anxiety and depression, there is increased sensitivity in the amygdala, which regulates these feelings. Genes, hardships early in life and current stresses can all play roles in lowering the threshold for the amygdala to give us a hard time.
• Chronic stress affects three major areas of the brain: the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the amygdala.
• Chronic stress and high levels of stress hormones can lead to hippocampal atrophy, with the hippocampus decreasing in size. Loss of memory is therefore common in people who live under stressful conditions for a long time.
• The amygdala actually becomes more sensitive and more easily triggered by stress, so a person suffering from stress can become prone to fear and anxiety in everyday situations.
• Studies have shown that cognitive behavioural therapy can lead to a decrease in blood flow to the amygdala, suggesting that the fear-inducing part of the brain is less stimulated.
• We are hardwired to avoid anything risky or dangerous because we evolved from early humans who faced predators and other life-threatening situations regularly.
• When the amygdala receives a threat message, it causes the sympathetic nervous system to activate the “fight-or-flight” response. Blood and oxygen start pumping through your body at an increased rate to get your muscles ready to have a physical fight or to run away as fast as possible. If you’re facing a real threat, that response can help you survive, but in most situations, you just experience a racing heart rate and rapid breathing for no real reason.
• Emotional sensations and experiences result from the ongoing interaction between the heart, brain, nervous, and hormonal systems. The brain develops familiar patterns of emotional experience and looks for similarities, differences, and relationships between patterns.
• The brain automatically strives to maintain a match with mental, emotional, and physical anxiety responses and habits, despite their detrimental impact on health, well-being, or behaviour. Without effective intervention, anxiety can become self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing.
• When overly aroused by real or imagined dangers, the limbic system impairs brain functioning in a number of significant ways. This reduced functioning often occurs without conscious awareness and can even generate false confidence. For example, increased adrenaline when you experience fear might make you feel focused and therefore more confident in your decisions, when your ability to make the best decisions has actually been reduced.

This information suggests that anxiety can cause significant changes in the brain, particularly in the amygdala, cortex, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. These changes can lead to a variety of physical and psychological symptoms, including fear, worry, panic attacks, and difficulty concentrating. However, it is important to note that the brain is plastic and can change in response to experience. This means that with the right treatment and self-care strategies, it is possible to reverse the negative effects of anxiety on the brain and improve mental health.