Biological Background of Anxiety Attacks in Agoraphobia

Academic Paper from the year 2019 in the subject Psychology - Biological Psychology, grade: 93.2, Athabasca University, language: English, abstract: Anxiety is characterized as either a state of mind, lacking a thick spatial depth, or otherwise conceived as something that individuals undergo alone. Anxiety can be in different shapes and levels of severity; this paper will describe its biological background in cases of Agoraphobia. It will touch the base of such biological influence as overactivity of the nucleus locus coeruleus and changes in the level of activity of this enzyme MAO activity. GABA levels fluctuation may be another reason for causing pathological anxiety, as well as experimental evidence, suggests that overactivity of serotonergic pathways, particularly the ascending dorsal raphe system may contribute to the production of pathological anxiety, studies also have demonstrated both decreased and increased dopamine turnover in response to stress. Lastly, activation of the right frontal hemisphere appears to portray activation of an avoidance-withdrawal system and seems to be correlated with negative emotions; several observations suggest that panic disorder should be characterized by right frontal hyperactivation.