Temporary feelings of anxiety may have a larger impact on a person’s ability to distinguish between threat and safety than a general tendency to feel anxious. The corresponding study was published in npj Science of Learning.
"These results help explain why some people struggle with anxiety-related disorders, such as PTSD, where they may have difficulty distinguishing safe situations from dangerous ones," senior author of the study, Benjamin Suarez-Jimenez, PhD, associate professor of Neuroscience at the University of Rochester, said in a press release.
For the study, researchers recruited 70 healthy student volunteers with an average age of 23 years old to participate in a virtual reality (VR) experiment. Participants were asked to ‘pick’ flowers in a VR environment in which ‘dangerous zone’ flowers resulted in a bee sting felt as a mild electric shock, while ‘safe’ zone flowers did not.
Those who learned to correctly distinguish between the zones were considered ‘learners’, whereas those who did not were considered ‘non-learners’. Participants completed a spatial memory task between trials. Galvanic skin response and State Trait Anxiety Inventory scores were also collected.
Ultimately, the researchers found that learners had better spatial memory and lower anxiety than non-learners. Meanwhile, non-learners had higher levels of anxiety and fear even in safe areas. The researchers further found that temporary feelings of anxiety had a larger impact on learning than a general tendency to feel anxious.
"The findings suggest that excessive anxiety disrupts spatial learning and threat recognition, which could contribute to chronic fear responses. Understanding these mechanisms may help improve treatments for anxiety and stress-related disorders by targeting how people process environmental threats,” said Suarez-Jimenez.
He noted that it is now important to know whether individuals with psychopathologies of anxiety and stress have similar variations in spatial memory.
Sources: Science Daily, npj Science of Learning