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Learned uncertainty: The free energy principle in anxiety

Generalized anxiety disorder is among the world’s most prevalent psychiatric disorders and often manifests as persistent and difficult to control apprehension. Despite its prevalence, there is no integrative, formal model of how anxiety and anxiety disorders arise. Here, we offer a perspective deriv...

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Autores principales: McGovern, H. T., De Foe, Alexander, Biddell, Hannah, Leptourgos, Pantelis, Corlett, Philip, Bandara, Kavindu, Hutchinson, Brendan T.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9559819/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36248528
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.943785
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author McGovern, H. T.
De Foe, Alexander
Biddell, Hannah
Leptourgos, Pantelis
Corlett, Philip
Bandara, Kavindu
Hutchinson, Brendan T.
author_facet McGovern, H. T.
De Foe, Alexander
Biddell, Hannah
Leptourgos, Pantelis
Corlett, Philip
Bandara, Kavindu
Hutchinson, Brendan T.
author_sort McGovern, H. T.
collection PubMed
description Generalized anxiety disorder is among the world’s most prevalent psychiatric disorders and often manifests as persistent and difficult to control apprehension. Despite its prevalence, there is no integrative, formal model of how anxiety and anxiety disorders arise. Here, we offer a perspective derived from the free energy principle; one that shares similarities with established constructs such as learned helplessness. Our account is simple: anxiety can be formalized as learned uncertainty. A biological system, having had persistent uncertainty in its past, will expect uncertainty in its future, irrespective of whether uncertainty truly persists. Despite our account’s intuitive simplicity—which can be illustrated with the mere flip of a coin—it is grounded within the free energy principle and hence situates the formation of anxiety within a broader explanatory framework of biological self-organization and self-evidencing. We conclude that, through conceptualizing anxiety within a framework of working generative models, our perspective might afford novel approaches in the clinical treatment of anxiety and its key symptoms.
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spelling pubmed-95598192022-10-14 Learned uncertainty: The free energy principle in anxiety McGovern, H. T. De Foe, Alexander Biddell, Hannah Leptourgos, Pantelis Corlett, Philip Bandara, Kavindu Hutchinson, Brendan T. Front Psychol Psychology Generalized anxiety disorder is among the world’s most prevalent psychiatric disorders and often manifests as persistent and difficult to control apprehension. Despite its prevalence, there is no integrative, formal model of how anxiety and anxiety disorders arise. Here, we offer a perspective derived from the free energy principle; one that shares similarities with established constructs such as learned helplessness. Our account is simple: anxiety can be formalized as learned uncertainty. A biological system, having had persistent uncertainty in its past, will expect uncertainty in its future, irrespective of whether uncertainty truly persists. Despite our account’s intuitive simplicity—which can be illustrated with the mere flip of a coin—it is grounded within the free energy principle and hence situates the formation of anxiety within a broader explanatory framework of biological self-organization and self-evidencing. We conclude that, through conceptualizing anxiety within a framework of working generative models, our perspective might afford novel approaches in the clinical treatment of anxiety and its key symptoms. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9559819/ /pubmed/36248528 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.943785 Text en Copyright © 2022 McGovern, De Foe, Biddell, Leptourgos, Corlett, Bandara and Hutchinson. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
McGovern, H. T.
De Foe, Alexander
Biddell, Hannah
Leptourgos, Pantelis
Corlett, Philip
Bandara, Kavindu
Hutchinson, Brendan T.
Learned uncertainty: The free energy principle in anxiety
title Learned uncertainty: The free energy principle in anxiety
title_full Learned uncertainty: The free energy principle in anxiety
title_fullStr Learned uncertainty: The free energy principle in anxiety
title_full_unstemmed Learned uncertainty: The free energy principle in anxiety
title_short Learned uncertainty: The free energy principle in anxiety
title_sort learned uncertainty: the free energy principle in anxiety
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9559819/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36248528
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.943785
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