Research Hit: Anxious People Use Their Brain Differently (and Less Suitably) in Decision Making

How anxious people recruit different parts of their brain in social decision making

Isn’t it that anxious people are just more nervous and it is that leads to less suitable decisions?

That would be the most obvious, and logical, assumption. Anxious people are more nervous, and therefore have higher emotional activation, and therefore make less suitable decisions, particularly at critical times or on important topics (for themselves).

But this recent research shows something more nuanced.

Oh, so what is it then?

Bramson et al. at the Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands put anxious and non-anxious people in brain scanners and gave them a simple task to do. This involved moving towards or away from happy or angry faces, virtually.

The one task is simple: move towards a happy face and away from an angry face - that is an automatic reaction. However the reverse, less logical behaviour, move away from the happy face and towards the angry face needs more emotional control.

And how did this differ? We use the front of the brain for this don’t we?

Indeed, the prefrontal cortex is used for this, and this is why people like me often talk about frontal control.

But what was interesting is not that there was higher or lower activation in the frontal area, but