Emotional Learning

The amygdala is involved, in humans, with the formation and storage of emotional reactions and events. Scientific research has found that in fear conditioning, which is what happens during the development of an anxiety disorder, the senses 'feed back' anxiety provoking signals to the Amygdala causing it to store memories of that anxious event. This then causes the amygdala to react differently when the event arises again. Over time, or during times of high anxiety (bereavement, divorce, work stress etc.) this 'learning process' can cause an anxiety disorder to form, sometimes without warning and very quickly.

Memories of emotions experienced become ingrained in the neural synapses and create 'fear behaviour' with the Amygdala. The central nucleus of the amygdala are connected directly to the creation and perpetuation of the fear responses and control the release of stress hormones which cause the common symptoms of anxiety disorders.