Contact us directly: healthpsyc@livemoresimply.com
5454 La Sierra Drive, Suite 201
Dallas, TX 75231
(888) 923-2256 ext. 1
Schedule Your FREE Meet and Greet
We specialize in Anxiety Disorders, Stress & Chronic Medical Conditions in adults.
Featured Video: What is Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
Also Featured: Anxiety Is More Than Worry
Treating Anxiety with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Video: Overcoming Anxiety 18 – Exposure Therapy
Video: A Guide to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Video: CBT Relaxation Exercises
Video: Systematic Desensitization – Snake Phobia
Video: Systematic Desensitization – Virtual Reality
Video: Systematic Desensitization – Fear of Elevators
Video: 13 Stress Relaxation Response
Video: 999 Rule – Reframing
Video: Cognitive Development and Training
Video: Health Anxiety Disorders – Overcoming Health Anxiety
Video: Building Self-Esteem with Facial Cues and Body Language Autism
Video: RSA Animate – The Secret Powers of Time
The Neuropsychology of Anxiety
Video: Neurotransmitters – GABA
Video: Neuroimaging – What is Cool
Video: Baby Albert- How Emotions are learned
Video: Systematic Desensitization – Little Albert
Video: Little Albert Original Footage
Video: Classical Conditioning
Video: The Structure of a Neuron
Video: How the Brain Works
Video: Plasticity
Video: Brain Cell Regeneration
Video: Hemisphere Balance
Video: Operant Behavior – B.F. Skinner
Video: The Amygdala – the cause of all your anxiety
What is Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about events or activities. This excessive worry often interferes with daily functioning, and sufferers are overly concerned about everyday matters such as health issues, money, death, family problems, friendship problems, interpersonal relationship problems, or work difficulties. Symptoms may include excessive worry, restlessness, trouble sleeping, feeling tired, irritability, sweating, and trembling.
Generalized anxiety disorder has been linked to disrupted functional connectivity of the amygdala and its processing of fear and anxiety. Sensory information enters the amygdala through the nuclei of the basolateral complex (consisting of lateral, basal and accessory basal nuclei). The basolateral complex processes the sensory-related fear memories and communicates their threat importance to memory and sensory processing elsewhere in the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex and sensory cortices.
Another area, the adjacent central nucleus of the amygdala, controls species-specific fear responses in its connections to the brainstem, hypothalamus and cerebellum areas. In those with generalized anxiety disorder, these connections seem less functionally distinct, and there is greater gray matter in the central nucleus. Another difference is that the amygdala areas have decreased connectivity with the insula and cingulate areas that control general stimulus salience, while having greater connectivity with the parietal cortex and prefrontal cortex circuits that underlie executive functions. The latter suggests a compensation strategy for dysfunctional amygdala processing of anxiety. This is consistent with cognitive theories that suggest the use in this disorder of attempts to reduce the involvement of emotions with compensatory cognitive strategies.