Profs & Pints San Francisco: Understanding Anxiety

Profs and Pints San Francisco presents: “Understanding Anxiety,” a look at how our minds process perceived threats, with Andrew Fox, associate professor of psychology at the University of California Davis and director of a research lab focused on anxiety’s biological underpinnings.

[Tickets available only online. Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/anxiety .]

“Somebody's watching me, it's my anxiety,” laments the chart-topping song by Doechii that has struck a chord with listeners worldwide. For some people feelings of anxiety can be debilitating, and most of us regard such feelings as at least unpleasant and as something we’d rather feel less frequently.

Here’s the thing, though. Evolution shaped our brains to be afraid for a reason. If our ancestors had not felt enough anxiety to be wary of whatever lurked around them, we might not be around today to feel anything at all.

Gain a deep understanding of the root causes of anxiety and the treatment of anxiety disorders with Professor Andrew Fox, an expert on neuroscience related to anxiety and emotion, an editor of The Nature of Emotion, and the teacher of courses on biological psychology and the psychology of emotion.

He’ll talk about how our brain our organized to emote, having adapted over evolutionary history to express emotion and make emotion-relevant choices. As a result, our emotions are largely adaptive – until they’re not. This line of thinking has strong implications for our understanding of both day-to-day anxiety and anxiety treated in clinical settings.

You’ll learn about cutting-edge research—both in Dr. Fox’s lab and elsewhere—into the neurobiology of threat processing. Dr. Fox will provide a sobering discussion of what the findings of such research means for our understanding of the anxiety-related mental health disorders that affect millions of people worldwide.

Leveraging insights from basic science, Dr. Fox will discuss why existing treatments are only partially effective and how we can work toward the development of brain-inspired treatments for those whose anxiety is debilitating. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A lion peers through tall grass in Tanzania. Photo by Susan Jane Golding / Creative Commons.