What is Anxiety? A Brain-Based Explanation

A neuroscientist’s perspective on anxiety

According to LeDoux, anxiety is a “conscious feeling.” It can arise from either (1) “activity in the [brain’s] defense circuits” or (2) “higher [order brain] processes that conceptualize worry.”

— Joseph LeDoux, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 257–258.