Brain Activity Alters After a Mistake

Brain monitoring proposes a common link between electrical tremors and mental health disorders as per a study at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, published in Biological Psychiatry. It has been found that irregular brain responses to challenging tasks and mistakes could serve as a key to understanding common links between cognitive disorders and abnormal behaviors in several mental illnesses.

The study evaluated the electrical tremors (naturally occurring electrical vibrations produced in areas at the front of the brain) using EEG (Electroencephalogram – measures the electrical activity of the brain).

It was that specific brain waves – ‘theta activity’, in people with anxiety, ADHD, and OCD tend to vary after mistakes or challenging situations when compared to those in healthy brains.

Brain Activity and Mental Illness

These findings suggest that disorders like anxiety, OCD, and ADHD are strongly linked to consistently divergent oscillating brainwaves that differ from healthy brains in the midfrontal region.

“From our review, we see that a healthy brain is one in which we see consistent levels of theta activity at the right moments. Theta activity in an anxious person for example is imbalanced over time compared to someone without anxiety. Someone experiencing anxiety, while able to take in new information, isn’t able to alter their cognitive behavior effectively going forward because they are overfocussed on reacting immediately to environmental stimuli. Consistency and balance in these signals are thought to be essential for effective communication between brain regions, and appropriate and timely responses to our environment,” says Dr. Grainne McLoughlin, the study’s first author from King’s IoPPN.

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This may help improve diagnostic methods and the effectiveness of currently available treatments like CBT.

Source-Medindia