Fear Vs Anxiety

Fear may represent the most powerful motivator on the spectrum of emotions experienced by human beings. Instigating everything from escaping bodily harm to sweating profusely before an exam, fear substantially molds our cognition and our behaviors. Further supporting the fundamental nature of fear is its universality; all animals, including primitive insects and worms, have demonstrated fear responses to certain stimuli (“Fear in the Brain”, 2003). Despite its ubiquity, fear signified an incredibly poorly understood concept until relatively recently. Prior to pioneering advances in neuroscience and psychology, questions concerning the origin of fear (What causes it and where is it processed?) and its manifestations (How do momentary instances
However, it is important to note that fear and anxiety are inextricably linked, and the differences between them are not always clear. For instance, high anxiety levels lead to more pronounced fear responses in children who have undergone fear conditioning ( Jovanovich et al, 2014). This limitation of discriminability becomes very apparent when discussing the conscious experience of fear. Can fear and anxiety be experienced simultaneously? Are fear and anxiety different constructs altogether or do they fall on the same spectrum? While a detailed analysis of these questions lies outside the scope of this paper, distinguishing anxiety’s readily identifiable characteristics from those of fear is essential; given the intangible nature of emotions, comprehending what does not constitute fear facilitates an understanding of what does through a simple elimination of possibilities. Fear and anxiety may share a considerable amount of gray area, but the experiments and information discussed will treat fear and anxiety as separate
The sensory cortex and thalamus, for instance, process the sensory input that leads to a fear response. The hippocampus may establish a context through which fear stimuli can be interpreted (e.g. traumatic memories can provoke a fear response even when the individual is in a nonthreatening environment), and the hypothalamus activates the so-called “fight or flight” reaction that is associated with extreme fear. In a sense, these regions can be viewed as sort of cognitive assembly line that, through the sum of its parts, creates the human experience, both conscious and unconscious, of fear (LeDoux,