The often debated concept of Nature vs. Nurture has in recent years become less of a polarizing topic. With advancements in psychology and biology, the factors that go in to the etiology of certain disorders and diseases have become more clear, but also less clearly distinct from one another. The lines between what is caused by environmental factors or by biological factors are becoming more and more blurred. In particular, social anxiety acts as an excellent example of how these factors can become intermixed to create the symptomology of a disorder. It has become clear to modern scientists that social anxiety disorder results from a complex interplay between environmental and biological factors. Social anxiety disorder results in a persistent
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1). Human fear responses serve an evolutionary purpose to protect people from potential dangers. However, if that fear response doesn’t end once the threat is over, this results in the symptoms associated with anxiety. The pathway that this response takes is through networks within the prefrontal cortex, the thalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala. The amygdala is involved with several parts of emotional processing. In particular, it is involved with, as this paper states, “mediating adaptive and pathological fear responses” (Mathew et al., 2008, pg. 3). The amygdala also functions in the acquisition of fear conditioning, meaning that it acts in the formation of a conditioned fear response to a stimulus. As such, people who have social anxiety disorder are seen to have more responsivity within their amygdala in response to aversive stimuli (Faria et al., 2014). So, it is likely that this prolonged sensation of fear is caused by this change in reactivity of the amygdala. However, it is not entirely certain yet what exact biochemical changes occur within the brains of those afflicted that causes this amygdalan response. There are multiple theories as to what exact biochemical pathways might be affected, but modern science has yet to settle on any exact
1). Human fear responses serve an evolutionary purpose to protect people from potential dangers. However, if that fear response doesn’t end once the threat is over, this results in the symptoms associated with anxiety. The pathway that this response takes is through networks within the prefrontal cortex, the thalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala. The amygdala is involved with several parts of emotional processing. In particular, it is involved with, as this paper states, “mediating adaptive and pathological fear responses” (Mathew et al., 2008, pg. 3). The amygdala also functions in the acquisition of fear conditioning, meaning that it acts in the formation of a conditioned fear response to a stimulus. As such, people who have social anxiety disorder are seen to have more responsivity within their amygdala in response to aversive stimuli (Faria et al., 2014). So, it is likely that this prolonged sensation of fear is caused by this change in reactivity of the amygdala. However, it is not entirely certain yet what exact biochemical changes occur within the brains of those afflicted that causes this amygdalan response. There are multiple theories as to what exact biochemical pathways might be affected, but modern science has yet to settle on any exact