Anxiety

A Neuroscientific and Psychopedagogical Definition

Anxiety is an emotional response characterized by feelings of tension, worry, and nervousness, often in the absence of an immediate external threat. From a neuroscientific perspective, anxiety involves the activation of brain areas such as the amygdala"The amygdala is a gray matter structure named after its cha... More, the prefrontal cortexThe prefrontal cortex plays a fundamental role in numerous p... More, and the limbic system, which are responsible for threat assessment, emotional regulation, and stressWhat is stress? From a clinical perspective, stress is a phy... More response. This emotional state can affect not only psychological well-being but also cognitive abilities and social behavior.

Facial Microexpressions Associated

• Furrowed or raised eyebrows, reflecting worry or fear.
• Narrowed or wide-open eyelids, indicating alertness or surprise.
• Tight or trembling lips, a sign of nervousness or tension.
• Visibly irregular or rapid breathing, which may accompany high anxiety.

What Are the Symptoms of Anxiety?

Anxiety is considered a general psychic phenomenon, manifesting in all individuals as a reaction to a real or imagined situation. Anxiety can be described as intense worry or fear experienced in relation to a stimulus for which no adaptive response occurs. From an educational perspective, it is important to note that different levels of anxiety can produce very different effects: low-intensity anxiety may enhance associative abilities and speed up learningIl termine apprendimento - con i sinonimi imparare, assimila... More, while higher-intensity anxiety can produce diametrically opposite effects.

Symptoms of anxiety can be categorized into four levels: behavioral, physiological, emotional, and cognitive.

• Behavioral: generally manifest as avoidance of the perceived source of anxiety. These behaviors can be adaptive at low intensity but maladaptive at higher intensity.
• Physiological: increased heart rate, enhanced blood flow to muscles, faster breathing, slowed digestive processes, and pupil dilation.
• Emotional: anxiety is based on feelings of fear in response to a present or imagined stimulus, triggered by memory or projected into the future. Anxiety involves the amygdala and the initiation of fight-or-flight responses.
• Cognitive: attention is predominantly, and sometimes excessively, focused on the anxiety-inducing stimulus, reducing associative and data-processing capacities.

What Causes Anxiety?

According to the perspective of Pedagogy for the Third Millennium, it is essential to understand that anxiety is produced by an interpretive process. While fear is, in appropriate measure, a natural and adaptive physiological reaction that prepares the organism to respond appropriately to a possible threat, anxiety arises in response to an imagined stimulus, which may be plausible but also entirely abstract. Our brain has the capacity to influence itself through abstract representation, meaning that an imagined stimulus can produce the same physiological responses as a real one. The same process of abstract representation can therefore be used as a tool to manage anxiety.