The event "Understanding Anxiety" features Andrew Fox, a psychology professor at UC Davis, exploring the evolutionary roots and biological mechanisms underlying anxiety. The discussion emphasizes how anxiety, a survival trait, can become debilitating. Fox aims to elaborate on the neurobiology of threat processing, share research findings, and discuss implications for anxiety disorders and treatments. He emphasizes the adaptive nature of emotions and challenges the effectiveness of existing treatments, advocating for new brain-inspired methods.
For some people feelings of anxiety can be debilitating, and most of us regard such feelings as at least unpleasant and as something we'd rather feel less frequently.
Evolution shaped our brains to be afraid for a reason. If our ancestors had not felt enough anxiety to be wary of whatever lurked around them, we might not be around today.
Our emotions are largely adaptive - until they're not. This line of thinking has strong implications for our understanding of both day-to-day anxiety and anxiety treated in clinical settings.
Dr. Fox will provide a sobering discussion of what the findings of such research mean for our understanding of the anxiety-related mental health disorders that affect millions of people worldwide.
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