Anxiety Disorder: Being Hyper Vigilant May Save Your Life

Anxiety may be a psychological disorder that--when it develops into a chronic state--may impact a person's quality of living. However, a new study suggests that being anxious might actually save lives.

According to a study published in eLife on Dec. 29, being constantly anxious, which puts an individual in a "hyper-vigilant state," can actually help a person stay out of danger.

The new study, conducted by researchers at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research, suggests that being constantly alert is actually not bad for the health, as presented in previous studies, according to The Telegraph.

Anxiety was thought to make threat signals hypersensitive, which result to people being unable to react quickly during dangerous situations. But the new study points out that anxiety seems to let the threat signals reach the area of the brain more quickly to stimulate the "fight or flight" response.

To arrive to their conclusion, researchers, led by Marwa El Zein, studied 24 participants, who had their brains analyzed for electric signals using an electroencephalogram (EEG).

These participants were given different photos showing angry or fearful facial expressions.

Each of them was asked to say if the photos expressed feelings of anger or fear. All the photos showed people with the same expression, but in some photos, the subjects were not looking directly at the camera but in a different direction.

Researchers found out that the human brain was able to distinguish social threats in the brain region, responsible for "fight or flight" response, in just 200 milliseconds.

"Such quick reactions could have served an adaptive purpose for survival," El Zein said, according to The Telegraph.

On the other hand, for those who tend to be less anxious, the brain signals are directed only toward a specific area of the brain that is associated with facial recognition and sensory perception.

Researchers also wanted to figure out what is most threatening for people when it comes to a compromising social situation.

The study revealed that the specific direction that a person is looking at is also important in influencing the sensitivity of an individual's emotions.

For instance, those who saw pictures of people looking directly at the camera had faster brain reaction compared to the pictures showing people looking elsewhere.

"In a crowd, you will be most sensitive to an angry face looking towards you, and will be less alert to an angry person looking somewhere else," El Zein explained.

While anxious people are usually the ones who'd rather avoid taking risks in their lives, the study only shows that this group of people are also the ones that tend to survive longer.