How the Brain Handles the Unknown

Uncertainty can be hard for humans. It drives anxiety, an emotion neuroscientists are trying to understand and psychologists are trying to better treat. From a report: Under the threat of a virus, job insecurity, election uncertainty, and a general pandemic life-in-limbo that is upending school, holidays and more, people are especially anxious. Before the pandemic, anxiety was already climbing in the U.S., especially among young adults, according to a recent study. Add the pandemic and its many unknowns: 35% of adults in the Household Pulse Survey reported symptoms of anxiety disorder in July. (In the first half of 2019, it was roughly 8%.) “We have anxiety for a reason,” says Stephanie Gorka, who studies the neurobiology of anxiety and treatments for anxiety-related disorders and phobias at the Ohio State University. Anxiety alerts people to pay attention to their environment and is key to our survival, but if it is chronic or excessive, it can have negative health consequences, she says. But how exactly the brain responds to uncertainty and leads to anxiety is unclear.