New Study Says Anxiety May Affect Decision Making Skills

Recent posts on social media have discussed anxiety and what to expect if you or others are suffering from it. Anxiety may cause social dysfunction as most commonly reported but a recent finding has shown that it may affect decision-making, too.

Bita Moghaddam, from the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, published her recent findings in the Journal of Neuroscience that the research on anxiety has only focused on emotional response. 

Many post

s about anxiety which aim to create awareness have become viral. However, most articles about anxiety disorders affect them but it is mostly related to their emotions just like this one from the Huffington Post.

"We have had a simplistic approach to studying and treating anxiety. We have equated it with fear and have mostly assumed that it over-engages entire brain circuits," Moghaddam said. Their study focused on the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) as it is mainly responsible for decision-making skills.

They tested two groups of mice where one was injected with an anxiety-inducing drug while the second group had a placebo injection. They tested the rats' ability to make a decision with distractions that may alter their logical reasoning in order to receive a reward.

Both groups of mice completed the decision-making task but the rodents with the anxiety made significantly more mistakes compared to the ones who received a placebo. This was particularly evident in the decision-making task which involved many distractions.

Based on these findings, the team believes that anxiety affects decision-making ability through interfering with certain neurons found in the PFC. "This study shows that anxiety disengages brain cells in a highly specialized manner," Moghaddam said. 

Their findings offer much help in studying anxiety and how it affects mental health. The team hopes their study would lead to better treatment for anxiety and similar disorders.