# Anxiety and Depression - Nature or Nurture?



## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

_*Ah here we go - I've found some research on this issue. If you don't like science, go do something else, I would suggest ....*_

Here is the view of Biopsychologists (not psychodynamic, behavioural, jungian or otherwise psychologists - Biopsychology is a discipline in is own right)

K so the brain has lots of different bits to it, different organs if you like. There's a bit of the brain that responds to stress. Its situated in the limbic system and comprises amongst others the periacqueductal gray and the amygdala. The amygdala is the 'memory centre' for stressful events. There are also a ton of hormones, most notably adrenaline, norepinephrine and glucocorticoids.

*This is roughly how it goes. *

1. We experience an event. The amygdala checks to see if it has info on the event, and if so attaches emotional meaning to it. If we see it as threatening, the brain calls into action the sympathetic nervous system. Signals to the hympothalamus cause large amounts of adrenaline and glucocorticoids to be produced. This causes emotional and physical arousal and the experience of fear or anger.

2) The brain calls into action the logic centres - the frontal cortex and the centres of reasoning. How will I deal with this experience? Am I strong enough to win? Do I have the skill to get out of this? Depending on the response, one of two things happen:

_a) If no coping response is found, or one that produces an unhelpful outcome, the body continues to produce stress hormones. The body responds via the Sympathetic Nervous system, and the person feels afraid or anxious. Heart rate increases. Blood vessels respond. If the perception is that the event will be hugely damaging in some way, the reaction is twice as severe.

b) If a coping response or reasoning is found, then a soothing response occurs. Different parts of the brain are brought into play, releasing opioids that calm the individual. The parasympathetic nervous system reponds and the body calms. Heart rate slows. Muscles relax._

Each time these systems are used, they become *stronger*. The neural pathways to them grow deeper and their response times and abilities get more powerful.

*So how does this feed into the 'born with it' idea?*

When we are in the womb, mom has the same hormones floating around in her bloodstream. If she releases lots of natural opiates, then baby is clamed and relaxed. The neural pathways of relaxation (PARASYMPATHETIC) are strenghtened. If mum is a bit of a stress case, or experiences trauma, she dumps a load of glucocorticoids into her, and baby's, bloodstream. The more this happens, the more baby's arousal (SYMPATHETIC) system is strengthened. Dependent on how much of either emotion the baby experiences, it will emerge with a slight tendency towards relaxation or arousal.

Then comes nurture. Handling by a parent is universally known throughout the animal kingdom, and human nature, to produce calming, soothing effects on the young. It is known that the more relaxed and happy a mum is, the more she will soothe and handle the baby. The more empathy she will have for the child, and respond to its needs. She will 'model' calm behaviour. Baby's calming system is getting more powerful. If mum is emotionally disturbed, she may not handle baby so much. A stressful environment may cause further emotional arousal for baby, who is not being soothed. His or her arousal system is becoming further strenghtened. If it was already strengthened in the womb, this system is now becoming very strong. At the same time, the 'soothing' system is going untended to.

SO now the young toddler has a built in pre-disposition to reacting with arousal, instead of calming, to stress inputs. The child's main reaction to bad events is to become upset and disturbed, to react with the sympathetic nervous system, instead of finding a way to calm itself - using the PARAsympathetic nervous system. These self soothing responses may take the form of talking to him/herself and of finding the calmer perception of the situation. They are more able to find a coping strategy such as smiling, or trying to be friendly. The nervous child finds this much harder. @emotional Hijack' by the amygdala tends to paralyse rational coping response. Yet again, those pathways to the arousing, sympathetic nervous system get stronger.

The more this continues into adulthood, the more deep seated the stress response becomes. So if those early stressors involved people, being criticised, being rejected and so on, a deep cut fear of people and social situations will emerge.

A recap: Stress response is formed of 1) The event and the meanings attached to it (via amygdala) 2) The purely emotional response (thought to reside in the anterior temporal lobe) 3) The physiological response (amygdala to other brain systems).

Key inputs are: a) Mothers stress during pregancy b) soothing, or otherwise, response of mother in early infancy c) development of coping thoughts or reactions, or self soothing in the child d) Construction of meaning (positive or negative) to the child of objects and events e) Absence or presence of traumatic events and their interaction with the childs prevaling reaction tendency. f) Length of time that negative coping responses / reactions continue. 

In addition, a calm-in-the-womb baby can become a nervous-in-reality toddler or child if a big enough, or frequent enough, negative reinforcing event occurs. The key is that building of positive or negativ neural pathways. The earlier it started, the more significant the later stressing events were, or the longer it continues, *the longer it takes to reverse the effects*. _They are however, reversible._

So in a way it could be argued that anxiety is mostly 'nurture'. but yes you can be born with a sensitivity to it. You might like to look at that chunk in blue and think which bits of it can be changed and how.

Source: Biopsychology, Sixth Edition; John PJ Pinel


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## embers (Dec 19, 2006)

wow, very interesting. :thanks gonna copy and paste. No wonder it takes so much work and time to undo all this.


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## tomcoldaba (Jul 1, 2007)

It is very interesting post. I can see my SA occured in my early childhood due to stress. This article make great deal of sense to me.


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## ardrum (May 13, 2007)

Great read.


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## X33 (Feb 13, 2005)

That's interesting. Do you know if positive reinforcement while on benzos (or any anti anxiety med) can reverse the negative pathways? 
If it can, then relatively short term strong use of benzos etc. should be able to reverse the pathways permanently.


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## AndyLT (Oct 8, 2007)

Why can't mind understand that the way it works is the problem itself? 

P.S.:
Yo Ardrum, how's going?


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## ardrum (May 13, 2007)

AndyLT said:


> P.S.:
> Yo Ardrum, how's going?


Just fine. Yourself?


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## AndyLT (Oct 8, 2007)

ardrum said:


> Just fine. Yourself?


Nice to hear that.
And i'm going through a lot of changes. So it's hard and hurts... But i got tired of inactivity.


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## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

ag said:


> That's interesting. Do you know if positive reinforcement while on benzos (or any anti anxiety med) can reverse the negative pathways?
> If it can, then relatively short term strong use of benzos etc. should be able to reverse the pathways permanently.


Hi ag

I guess the answer to that would be tough to find. One, you would have to make sure that you spent enough time undoing the neural paths - and the only way to know that, currently, is to take the patient off the meds and see how they cope. That could take years and thats a long time on benzos. SSRI's may be easier to tolerate over that time.

Secondly, with time all sorts of neural branches get formed from the main ones - like weeds growing in a garden. Thats why social anxiety can start off as mild panic in a classroom one day, and have branched out into hyperventilating in liquor stores by the time you're 21 (assuming you live in the US. 18 if UK ...). So you would need to make sure you are addressing every situation that has affected you due to the compartmental nature of anxieties.

However, if you only mentally attribute the success to the drugs, then you will not undo them - thats because the 'meaning' part of the process will go from "everything is scary" to "when I am on benzos everything is fine". This is where belief starts to cross over with neurology, and is thought to be the basis for how belief change psychologies and other thought-changing processes work. Thats the conclusion reached by research - that belief change plus meds tends to be the longest acting solution. each person will be different though, according to complexity of negative neural nets, levels of neural plasticity (look it up), extreme trauma which is harder to reverse and response to meds.

Thats why overcoming SA is a Journey, different for everyone. It takes into account background, beliefs, experience, time spent in distress, levels of distress and biochemistry. Thats why I always say its important to get started on SOMETHING - because its better to get those neural nets unscrewing sooner than later.

Now my brain hurts.


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## AndyLT (Oct 8, 2007)

The more i think about my issues, the more ridiculous they appear. 
Time to go to sleep - need to recharge my anxiety.


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## X33 (Feb 13, 2005)

yeah_yeah_yeah said:


> ag said:
> 
> 
> > That's interesting. Do you know if positive reinforcement while on benzos (or any anti anxiety med) can reverse the negative pathways?
> ...


Yeah that's a valid point and it was in the back of my mind when I made the first post. I also understand other things you said. Good post.


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## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

What I like most is that these are all new fields. There's so much being learned all the time! I would love it if we had a little machine that sent nanobots into your brain and straightened out all the squiffy neurons.

More likely to bear fruit soon though is this. There's research been done on using certain nueron blockers in rats which stop them from undergoing classical conditioning. Using a calcium blocker, they found they could stop rats from *learning to be scared, and then extinguish learned fearful responses in conditioned test subjects*! Have a peek here: http://www.ionchannels.org/showabstract ... id=9716132

Actually, this one is better: http://zadorlab.cshl.edu/PDF/ehninger-etal2005.pdf

Neuroscience rocks.


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## X33 (Feb 13, 2005)

haha can you believe it? I am going to do research on the Ca AMPA receptors this summer.


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## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

Now THATS a chat up line


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## X33 (Feb 13, 2005)

Btw, yeahyeahyeah (Ross?) it is nice to see someone interested in the science side of things. I thought I was in a minority on this board.

About a year ago, I read of a product (in the US, not sure about UK) which works like a benzo without any negative side effects. It does so by acting specifically on GABA-A (or was it B?) receptors. At the time, the drug was in clinical phase II. It is predicted to be on the market in 2009. Initially it looks like it will be used for treating stuttering. 

I forgot the name of the drug though. It does sound promising.


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## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

If you can find it that would be interesting  And yes I is Ross. You are Agtoledomale? :lol


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## X33 (Feb 13, 2005)

a little digging and I found this:
http://www.indevus.com/site/index.php?I ... &task=view
Name of the drug is pagoclone.

Yes, I am Sir Agtoledomale, but for convenience purposes you can call me "your highness" or "great one", either is ok. (j/k)


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## yeah_yeah_yeah (Mar 27, 2007)

ag said:


> a little digging and I found this:
> http://www.indevus.com/site/index.php?I ... &task=view
> Name of the drug is pagoclone.
> 
> Yes, I am Sir Agtoledomale, but for convenience purposes you can call me "your highness" or "great one", either is ok. (j/k)


Sir Agtoledomale the Third, I salute you! LOL. Run together that sounds quite exotic. I'll take a read of that link, thanks ag!

EDIT: Ok read it. Limits neuronal firing ... sounds promising. My guess would be that it could do that in the amygdala or similar? Woow. Thanks again.


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## X33 (Feb 13, 2005)

yeah_yeah_yeah said:


> ag said:
> 
> 
> > a little digging and I found this:
> ...


Glad you liked the read. I haven't had the chance to thoroughly read about this new drug with exams around the corner. But I will when I get a chance.

Regards,
Sir Agtoledomale III


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