Anxiety Disorders and Hypervigilance: How Real-Time Threat Monitoring Drives Physiological and Cognitive Symptoms
Anxiety disorders are conditions in which threat detection systems become persistently overactive, producing excessive fear, worry, and behavioral or cognitive changes. While anxiety can be adaptive, pathological anxiety is characterized by intensity, duration, and impairment that exceed what is proportionate to actual risk. A central mechanism involves hypervigilance: an attentional bias toward potential danger, often… Read More »