Anxiety and the Motivational Basis of Working Memory

Anxiety constrains cognition by biasingattention toward the anticipation of threat. Thebiological basis of this influence may be seen in theevolutionary progression of vertebrate defensivebehavior away from simple reflexes and toward increasingneural mediation between threat stimulus and behavioralresponse. In mammalian brains with larger frontal lobesthe mediation becomes complex; limbic motivational circuits, which extend into prefrontal areas,operate to constrain the corticolimbic consolidation ofmemory. In humans, hemispheric specialization and theextensive elaboration of limbic cortex in the frontal lobes may provide clues to the uniqueways that human motivational controls shape memory andcognition. By focusing attention, anxiety may play a keyrole in the analytic cognition believed to be subsumed by the left hemisphere. By bringingthe defensive affective posture from limbic structuresto bear upon the frontal lobe's organization of workingmemory, anxiety may be particularly important to the ongoing feedback control of thecognitive process. The study of neural mechanismssuggests that anxiety is not simply a distraction to thecognitive apparatus; it may be fundamental to motivating cognition adaptively.