Anxious brains navigate social challenges differently. Here's how

In situations involving social discomfort, individuals with anxiety tend to activate a less appropriate section of the frontal region of the brain when making behavioral choices compared to those without anxiety. This phenomenon is evident through brain imaging analyses conducted by Bob Bramson and Sjoerd Meijer at the Donders Institute of Radboud University.This marks the first instance where brain scans demonstrate the distinct neural functioning of the prefrontal region among anxious and non-anxious individuals when it comes to emotional behavior regulation. The researchers speculate that these findings could potentially pave the way for novel treatments catering to individuals with anxiety.

Navigating emotional responses

Consider an anxious person and a non-anxious person both encountering someone they have strong romantic feelings for. Both experience tension in this encounter and both desire to ask the person out on a date.

The question arises: Should they approach the person or avoid them to circumvent potential embarrassment?

While the non-anxious individual can effectively manage their emotions and opt for a course of action that involves approaching the potential partner, an anxious person finds this considerably more challenging.

Bramson explained, “Anxious people use a less suitable section of the forebrain for this control. It’s more difficult for them to choose alternative behaviour, so they avoid social situations more often.”

Balancing threat andreward

Decisions like these demand a balance between perceived threats and potential rewards, a cognitive process carried out in the prefrontal cortex by non-anxious individuals.

“Our trial subjects were shown happy and angry faces and had to first move a joystick towards the happy face and away from the angry face. At a certain point they had to do the reverse: move towards an angry face and away from a happy face. This demands control over our automatic tendency to avoid negative situations,"Bramson said.

Interestingly, anxious participants performed similarly to their non-anxious counterparts in this straightforward task.

However, the brain scans unveiled distinct patterns of activation.

Bramson explained, “In non-anxious people we often see that, during emotional control, a signal is sent from the foremost section of the prefrontal cortex to the motor cortex, the section of the brain that directs your body to act. In anxious people, a less efficient section of that foremost section is used.”

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Additional scans indicate that this divergence is likely due to the 'appropriate' brain region becoming excessively stimulated in anxious individuals.

“This could explain why anxious people find it difficult to choose alternative behaviour and thus avoid social situations. The disadvantage of this is that they never learn that social situations aren’t as negative as they think.”

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