The Infona portal uses cookies, i.e. strings of text saved by a browser on the user's device. The portal can access those files and use them to remember the user's data, such as their chosen settings (screen view, interface language, etc.), or their login data. By using the Infona portal the user accepts automatic saving and using this information for portal operation purposes. More information on the subject can be found in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. By closing this window the user confirms that they have read the information on cookie usage, and they accept the privacy policy and the way cookies are used by the portal. You can change the cookie settings in your browser.
Guided by the diagnostic nosology, anxiety patients are expected to show defensive hyperarousal during affective challenge, irrespective of the principal phenotype. In the current study, patients representing the whole spectrum of anxiety disorders (i.e., specific phobia, social phobia, panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, obsessive‐compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD)), and healthy community control participants, completed an imagery‐based fear elicitation paradigm paralleling conventional intervention techniques. Participants imagined threatening and neutral narratives as physiological responses were recorded. Clear evidence emerged for exaggerated reactivity to clinically relevant imagery—most pronounced in startle reflex responding. However, defensive propensity varied across principal anxiety disorders. Disorders characterized by focal fear and impairment (e.g., specific phobia) showed robust fear potentiation. Conversely, for disorders of long‐enduring, pervasive apprehension and avoidance with broad anxiety and depression comorbidity (e.g., PTSDsecondary to cumulative trauma, GAD), startle responses were paradoxically diminished to all aversive contents. Patients whose expressed symptom profiles were intermediate between focal fearfulness and broad anxious‐misery in both severity and chronicity exhibited a still heightened but more generalized physiological propensity to respond defensively. Importantly, this defensive physiological gradient—the inverse of self‐reported distress—was evident not only between but also within disorders. These results highlight that fear circuitry could be dysregulated in chronic, pervasive anxiety, and preliminary functional neuroimaging findings suggest that deficient amygdala recruitment could underlie attenuated reflex responding. In summary, adaptive defensive engagement during imagery may be compromised by long‐term dysphoria and stress—a phenomenon with implications for prognosis and treatment planning...
Set the date range to filter the displayed results. You can set a starting date, ending date or both. You can enter the dates manually or choose them from the calendar.