Behavioral Neuroscience Article Critique

Behavioral neuroscience, as part of cognitive psychology, describes that enhances understanding of how the brain perceives and manifests fear and anxiety disorders. The article outlines how behavioral neuroscience breaks down fear and anxiety disorders into associative fear memory that provides an examination platform to incorporate fear condition as an assessment and analysis tool. The article further describes how persistence and generalization of fear overtime changes to become anxiety disorder which translates to a whole new aspect of brain psychology. However, with insights as to how these changes occur and the mechanisms involved, the article highlight how various advanced treatments are being developed to manage fear and anxiety disorders. Many questions, however, remain unanswered as the brain is an involved muscle responsible for multiple actions in all the species.

Research over the past decade has yielded promising theories aimed at explaining the origin and nature of fear and anxiety disorders. Hypotheses derived from established theories have resulted in the emergence of effective treatments that are continually being improved with a continued understanding of neurobiological mechanisms which are underlying to the development of associative fear learning and memory. The article is propagated at depicting the various paradigms of traditional fear conditioning that generates principles of fear earning and unlearning. The paradigms also highlight how fear transitions to stage from ordinary to pathological and finally to anxiety disorder and the mechanisms involved. Use of studies within the articles focuses on intermediate phenotype manifestations of fear and anxiety disorders using conditioning studies under the persistence and generalization of associative fear memory. These studies moreover provide the conclusive insights from behavioral neuroscience on the potential of developing long-term treatments of fear and associated anxiety disorders owing to the malleability nature of fear memory.

Reference 

Kindt, M. (2014, Sep 10). A behavioural neuroscience perspective on the aetiology and treatment of anxiety disorders. Behaviour Research and Therapy , Volume 62, pp. 24-36. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2014.08.012