PSY 1102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Major Depressive Disorder, Cyclothymia, Frontal Lobe

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSY 1102
• Professor: Najwa Haddad

Document Summary

Explaining anxiety disorders, biological factors: there is a genetic component in anxiety disorders. Every species is biologically predisposed to quickly learn to fear stimuli that threatened the survival of its ancestors (more than anything else) Brain: anxiety is linked and associated with high levels of activity in the amygdala (controls emotions, ie. fear) Ocd: high levels of activity in the frontal lobes, caudate nucleus, and anterior cingulate nucleus, low levels of serotonin. Gag: low levels of serotonin and gaba: psychological factors: faulty cognition (ways of thinking are maladaptive) Ie. hyper-vigilant: constantly on the look out for danger in the environment and over-exaggerates the slightest event/situation. This is partly due to maladaptive learning, where according to the learning perspective is where much of our fears and anxieties are learnt. Fear conditioning: neutral/harmless stimulus is associated with danger/treats. Stimulus generalization: afraid of a speci c stimulus, fear generalizes to similar stimuli. Observational learning: observe and imitate role models: socio-cultural factors.