Dysregulation of the Anxiety System & Bipolar

As per usual, I'm trying to focus on work now, but get completely derailed with a thought I feel the need (compulsively) to blog about.

I saw that someone somewhere on a remote part of the globe was reading a post I wrote a while ago postulating that fear was the first emotion to appear on the evolutionary scene. I decided to revisit it. Here's the link: http://taradeliberto.blogspot.com/2011/03/first-emotion-fear.html

While rereading the post, I had the thought that bipolar disorder may result from a dysregulation of the anxiety system. Long story short, in depression, we see that prolonged anxiety can lead to chronic sadness (via chronic exposure to cortisol and what I conceptualize as over-use of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis). We can also see that exhilaration and anxiety are quite similar emotions. Combining these two thoughts, perhaps bipolar disorder could arise out of the dysregulation of a primary anxiety system - sometimes leading to chronic sadness and other times leading to chronic exhilaration.

Interestingly, bipolar is pretty hereditary, but like most psychiatric disorders, it is thought to be prompted by none other than stress, perhaps indicating that it stems directly from some a dysregulation of the anxiety system.

I realize that this is being done already, but the fact that stress / anxiety can trigger the onset of disorders might be a signal to look at how anxiety relates to the course of the illness (with the consideration that anxiety could be the ultimate primary emotion). In this case, while stress may trigger bipolar disorder, lack of ability to regulate anxiety may maintain the behavior. While research in which I am involved examines reward sensitivity in bipolar, I'm wondering if a layer beneath reward sensitivity is anxiety sensitivity, being that we're conceptualizing anxiety as the ultimate primary emotion in this post.

I also realize that to say anxiety dysregulation may prompt bipolar disorder because stress prompts the onset utilizes circular reasoning. But circular reasoning notwithstanding (lol), I still think this is interesting to consider anxiety sensitivity as it relates to two separate constructs of bipolar - both onset and course of the illness.

Ok, back to work.

The Evolutionary Reason We Obsessively Check Facebook

Today's topic is how we're evolutionarily programmed to obsessively check Facebook.

Let's just say that you log on to Facebook and get a good laugh out of a friend's status. You log on a few more times that day, but nothing is interesting. But of course, before going to bed, you log back on one more time just in case. And lucky you - you get another late night chuckle.

First, in this little story, the funny statuses play the role of the reinforcer. Second, the fact that you never know when someone is going to write something clever makes the reinforcer intermittent - or, in other words, random. Put them together and what do you get? A little term us psychologists call intermittent reinforcement.

So the interesting thing is this: when we are intermittently reinforced, we tend to display obsessive behavior (e.g. gambling). Following the rule that intermittent reinforcement leads to obsessive behavior, in this example, never knowing when you're going to read something funny partially explains why we tend to check Facebook all the time as a species. [We also find humor, human interaction, and gossip particularly rewarding.]

So what may the evolutionary advantages to intermittent reinforcement be? Well, I'm not sure if there are too many evolutionary advantages to obsessively checking Facebook, but there certainly are for the underlying mechanism.

Specifically, I was thinking that animals may have evolved to become sensitive to intermittent reinforcement because if we become more persistent in the face of scarce reinforcement / resources, we may increase our chances of success.

Let's consider the definition of perseverance: steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.

In that definition, if "difficulties, obstacles, and discouragement" is conceptualized as a lack of reinforcement, then "persistence in a course of action" can be viewed as the somewhat obsessive behavior seen when intermittent reinforcement is given.

While perseverance (with a positive connotation) is readily associated with success, before today, I never considered perseverance as the behavioral result of an environment that is intermittently reinforcing. I'm guessing that will power comes into play too... but honestly, who really knows?

Now, while being sensitive to intermittent reinforcement may be helpful for us to persevere when times are tough, this tendency likely shaped by evolution won't serve us well in every scenario.

There is definitely a darker side to all of this. For instance, if you're more sensitive to intermittent reinforcement, you might be more inclined to stay in a roller coaster relationship, become a compulsive gambler or get engrossed with more trivial matters to increase your mood (e.g. check Facebook more times than you'd like to admit).

We typically think about engaging in these types of activities as a means to avoid feeling negative emotions like boredom, sadness, etc. It may certainly be the case that we engage in behaviors like obsessively checking Facebook to both avoid life and gain pleasure. At the same time, the obsessive nature of Facebook checking may be attributed to the underlying process may be one of intermittent reinforcement.

On a related note, rather than viewing psychopathology in terms of reward sensitivity, I wonder if sensitivity to specific types of reinforcement (or "schedules" as we call them) matters. Namely, sensitivity to intermittent reinforcement may be at the root. Food for thought.

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[And some food for later thought: perhaps this whole idea of valuing one's own naturally persevering nature somehow relates to asceticism. Together they combine to a pretty intense personality that is sensitive to reward.]

The First and Ultimate Primary Emotion - Fear

A member of an online community to which I belong posed this very interesting question to me on a psychology thread: Could fear be the origin of the entire spectrum of human emotion?

My answer:
Very thought provoking question. Fear is certainly what we consider a primary human emotion (among other emotions, e.g. happiness, anger, and sadness). Thinking about fear as the first emotion to appear in living things evolutionarily though is interesting.

[When we talk about origins, there are two types: a single person's individual origins and evolutionary origins. Being that each person comes into the world with a complex nervous system, it doesn't make sense to think of fear as being each individual's ultimate primary emotion. Considering this question in an evolutionary sense is far more interesting.]

In an evolutionary sense, fear is - of course - vital. Fear as a threat detection and deflection system certainly seems to rank #1 in terms of importance.

In fact, earlier in the thread in which this blog post originated, I discussed Kandel's Nobel Peace Prize winning work on the "memory" of slugs. The response that sea slugs can "remember" to recoil after being pinched in the gill is certainly very interesting. While this borders on what may seem like a classical conditioning response, there could be the beginnings of fear like responses here. [In terms of fear and how it relates to memory, it may be interesting to note here that fear evokes a release of calcium in the brain that leads to highly ingrained encoding of information.]

Although Freud might have said that sex drive is more primary, I'm not so sure. Perhaps fear responses were actually first to develop evolutionarily and reproduction urges (which aren't really emotions anyhow) came about later. But sex, and it's relation to love, seem way more advanced than fear. As far as a sea slugs is concerned - it is a hermaphrodite so a drive to (at least) seek out sex probably isn't that developed.

Along with sex, maybe other positive emotions simply aren't as necessary from an evolutionary standpoint. In fact, maybe emotions from being comforted and soothed developed after fear as a way to reduce and control it. Paul Gilbert Ph.D. talks about the importance of the physiological Soothing and Contentment System - but soothing from what? My guess is anxiety / fear - which was on the scene first.

Along with positive feelings of being soothed, exhilaration or happiness might also be linked to fear. Just think about the last time you were on a rollercoaster. Since the feeling of fear seems more important than exhilaration, it may be the case that feeling exhilaration developed out of the fear system.

[Hm - just had a thought about bipolar disorder and the sadness and happiness responses being a result of a dysregulation of anxiety systems, one that leads to prolonged depression and the other that leads to constant exhilaration. Anyhow - back to the original question.]

After talking about some positive feelings and the link to anxiety, let's consider anger. We know that someone's "threat detection system" is activated when they're angry. In other words, they may feel anxiety, and anger is the motivator to act. Therefore, the argument could be made that anxiety is first and anger has developed secondarily in the more advanced fight or flight system. We now have two options in response to anxiety: fight (anger) or flee.

Ok, now let's shift from talking about fear arising first on the evolution scene, to fear underlying our everyday experiences now.

For fun, let's consider the link between fear and depression as a psychiatric disorder. When first reading this question, my mind immediately jumped to the link between these two things. Prolonged fear / stress releases enormous amounts of cortisol, which impairs the functioning of the brain (for the scientifically curious - along the Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal axis) and leads to depression. Therefore, prolonged fear / stress is experienced first, and we think this is one route to depression.

Now, I realize depression is a psychiatric disorder linked to sadness, but it is not sadness itself. Therefore, saying fear always prompts sadness would not be a logical inference per se. On the other hand, these symptoms may be intimately linked whereas fear sometimes comes first. For instance, one may experiencing horror at the loss of a loved one first, and then deep sorrow. Typically people don't go straight to sad. There is usually shock (perhaps an anxiety response) and then sadness kind of sinks in either seconds, minutes, hours, or days later.

Flipping back into evolutionary terms, it seems that sadness is quite an advanced emotion compared to fear. While I can imagine an insect having a developed reactionary response with the rudimentary beginnings of a fear system, I can't necessarily picture a sorrow system.

In short, I think the case can be made that fear (as it stems from stimulus / threat detection) may be the ultimate primary emotion.

The Next Evolutionary Step for Humans

by Tara Deliberto

Recently a friend asked me what I thought the next evolutionary step for humans would be. My answer: the ability to be mindful. Most of us go through life without being present in the moment. The ability to have awareness of our own thoughts opens the door for greater control. Afterall, medititation increases the very part of the brain that is newest on the evolutionary scene - the neo cortex.