Jerusalem – New Research Shows Anxiety May Not Come From Hypersensitivity

Jerusalem – Anxious people have long been classified as “hypersensitive” for their tendency to be more fearful and feel threatened more easily than their non-anxious counterparts. But new research from Tel Aviv University shows that anxiety may not come from hypersensitivity; in fact, just the opposite, says Dr. Tahl Frenkel, a doctoral candidate from the school of psychological sciences and the Adler Center for Research in Child Developmental and Psychopathology, working with her supervisor Prof. Yair Bar-Haim.

As part of a study on how the brain processes fear in anxious and non-anxious individuals, the researchers looked at brain activity as study participants were shown fear-inducing stimuli. Using an electroencephalograph, which measures electrical activity on the scalp caused by activity of the neurons, the researchers discovered that the anxious group was actually less stimulated than the non-anxious group. The results of the study were recently published in the journalBiological Psychology.

This results show that the anxious participants weren’t as sensitive to subtle changes in their environment, explains Frenkel. Anxious individuals could have a deficit in their threat evaluation capabilities, necessary for effective decision making and regulating fear responses – leading to an over-reaction to subtle threatening stimuli.

Non-anxious individuals seem to have a subconscious “early warning system” that allows them to prepare for evolving threats. Essentially, anxious people are “surprised” by fearful stimuli that non-anxious individuals have already subconsciously noticed, analyzed and categorized properly by level of threat, she adds.

Anxious people process stimuli with a lot of bias, says Frenkel. They will categorize things as threatening that non-anxious people can process automatically and then dismiss as non-harmful.

A non-anxious person has forewarning when they are confronted with stimuli, having subconsciously noticed the subtle changes in the environment before conscious recognition of the threat. Without such preparation, anxious individuals often react more strongly, as though the threat is creeping up behind them.

“What looks like hypersensitivity on a behavioral level is in fact, when you look at the results of the EEG, the anxious person’s attempt to compensate for a deficit in the sensitivity of their perception,” she explains.