Blog
Save
Email
Print
ShareAnxiety is a physiological state characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components.
See also:
These components combine to create the feelings that we typically recognize as fear, apprehension, or worry.
Anxiety is often accompanied by physical sensations such as heart palpitations, nausea, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach aches, or headache.
The cognitive component entails expectation of a diffuse and certain danger.
Somatically the body prepares the organism to deal with threat (known as an emergency reaction): blood pressure and heart rate are increased, sweating is increased, bloodflow to the major muscle groups is increased, and immune and digestive system functions are inhibited.
Externally, somatic signs of anxiety may include pale skin, sweating, trembling, and pupillary dilation.
Emotionally, anxiety causes a sense of dread or panic and physically causes nausea, and chills.
Behaviorally, both voluntary and involuntary behaviors may arise directed at escaping or avoiding the source of anxiety and often maladaptive, being most extreme in anxiety disorders.
However, anxiety is not always pathological or maladaptive: it is a common emotion along with fear, anger, sadness, and happiness, and it has a very important function in relation to survival. Neural circuitry involving the amygdala and hippocampus is thought to underlie anxiety.
When confronted with unpleasant and potentially harmful stimuli such as foul odors or tastes, PET-scans show increased bloodflow in the amygdala.
In these studies, the participants also reported moderate anxiety.
This might indicate that anxiety is a protective mechanism designed to prevent the organism from engaging in potentially harmful behaviors.
For more information about the topic Anxiety, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Mental confusion — Severe confusion of a degree considered pathological usually refers to loss of orientation (ability to place oneself correctly in the world by time, ... > read more
Anger — Anger is a term for the emotional aspect of aggression, as a basic aspect of the stress response in animals in which a perceived aggravating stimulus ... > read more
Happiness — Happiness is a prolonged or lasting emotional or affective state that feels good or pleasing. Overlapping states or experiences associated with ... > read more
Emotion — Emotion, in its most general definition, is a neural impulse that moves an organism to action, prompting automatic reactive behavior that has been ... > read more
General anxiety disorder — General anxiety disorder or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder that is characterized by excessive and uncontrollable worry ... > read moreEditor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
Recommend this page on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:
Other bookmarking and sharing tools:
more 