Trait-like visual cortical hyperactivity in trait anxiety
Zhaohan Wu, Yuqi You, Joshua A Brown, Raymond J Dolan, Wen Li · 2025
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Description
Zhaohan Wu, Yuqi You, Joshua Brown, Raymond Dolan, and Wen Li show that anxious people process sights differently from the first moments in a 2025 study. Some people are highly sensitive to plain stimuli, a trait tied to emotional risk. The usual story credits emotion centers in the brain, but proof is thin.
Across four brain-wave experiments with repeat sessions, people high in trait anxiety showed extra activity in the visual cortex. The effect arose within fifty milliseconds, sat in the earliest visual areas, and ran through one specific visual pathway. It held across moods, stimulus types, and long gaps between sessions. A balance measure of brain excitation predicted responses in calm people but not in anxious ones, hinting at lost regulation. Anxiety, it seems, tunes sight itself.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Zhaohan Wu, Yuqi You, Joshua A Brown, Raymond J Dolan, Wen Li |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 62 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |