Anxiety Disorder Causes – advanced studies

Most people – especially those who worry a lot or have an anxiety disorder – have read enough about its symptoms and typical treatments.   Because there has seemed to be a causal – but undiscovered – link to the spiraling effect in anxiety sufferers that take anxiety to ‘disorder’ levels, medical science is now focused on a search for systemic causes.  An analysis of its early findings and discussion is the subject of this article.

The basic target-of-origin of these advanced studies into the relationship between brain function, or cognitive functionality, and anxiety drivers is now centered on its connection to memory in the human brain.  Notice I said brain – not mind, i.e. we’re talking about physiology not emotional reactions; pathology rather than habits. Specifically there remain great pods of unanswered dilemma regarding how the brain organizes and records in memory all events – and especially traumatic ones – that ignite long-term anxiety that leads to patterned anxiety disorder.  Closely connected to this study is the follow-on assumption that the mind stores trauma-based memory differently than ball-game-witnessing memory with some as-yet-undiscovered code which conscious thought uses to ‘pre-color’ the memory as alarming.

Early results are hinting now at the possibility of extremely remarkable knowledge – leading to axiomatic scientific fact – about the actual, physical operation of neurotransmitters and synaptic connectors in recording traumatic events.  It is now believed that someday we will be able to alter the effect of past trauma in terms of is emotional effect, by altering how the brain stores it.

The leading question, then, becomes one of uniqueness to the individual, meaning why can most people separate out the severity of the fear or threat while others cannot.  More integral to the question is why are certain events stored in such a way that self-survival-linked storage becomes “misused” by the brain in those who suffer extreme anxiety and its related disorders.

When the human brain is faced with external evidence of life-threat an amazing series of brain-events – in addition to obvious cognitive decision-making processes – takes place.  This brain function is driven by the amygdala – a set of life-threat-analyzer glands that process external stimuli produced by potentially lethal events, objects, or animals.  The amygdala literally take over the entire human body unlike any other brain function, assuming total control of physiology with the potential of hormone excretion in foreign glands and instant supercharging of metabolic and muscle-and-heart function.  This is the very essence of that which has allowed human beings to survive and to eat as opposed to being eaten.

It appears that there may be a unique way that the amydgala send-to-memory these traumatic “problems” of life and death that it has just processed and it is this unique storage assignment that researchers believe is target of ultimate finding and downstream drug development.  The initial testing of possible drug-impact scenarios include the application of heart disease drugs aimed at decreasing the effect of stress hormones adrenaline and epinephrine.  There are also experimental drugs designed to prevent or block certain brain cell receptors that are overly sensitive to stress hormones.  The ultimate goal is, obviously, to find a way to benignly alter brain function to process and store modern stress differently than in the brains of our distant ancestors.   This subject may be associated with panic attack and anxiety disorder.