Youth, GAD & UBA
Anxiety is a natural part of outdoor rock climbing and requires focus and attention.
UBA uses outdoor rock climbing to help youths work through their feelings of anxiety and increase their focus and attention as therapeutic interventions to improve overall functioning. It works! And a study in neuroscience explains why.
By identify the connection between brain functioning and emotional development, researchers believe that redirecting anxiety to increase focus can help youth decrease generalized anxiety.
Dr. Camach et al. conducted a cross-sectional analysis of 620 youths aged 5 to 15 years between February 2020 and August 2024, 53% of whom met criteria for a lifetime anxiety disorder diagnosis.
Using the Healthy Brain Network (HBN) database, the study looked at the brain activation states during socioemotional processing of youths to determine the association between the characteristics of various brain states and feelings of anxiety while watching videos.
All youths watched an emotional video during functional magnetic resonance imaging, completed a self-report questionnaires (Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders) and received a clinical evaluation.
Three brain activation states were identified: a high somatomotor activation state (state 1), a high cingulo-opercular network activation state (state 2), and a high ventral attention and default mode state (state 3).
Findings show that youths who self-reported generalized anxiety symptoms spent more time in state 3 with high ventral attention and default activation during negative socioemotional processing while watching the video. The video included content that was more negative, quieter, and with less visual motion.
Further, these patterns were specifically linked to generalized anxiety and were not found in relation to social anxiety symptoms, suggesting that these brain activity patterns are particularly relevant to the type of excessive worry that defines generalized anxiety.
These findings suggest that youths high in generalized anxiety may be more engaged in deeply processing negative emotional content, which may influence self-regulation.
To help youths move through their feelings of generalized anxiety and get “unstuck”, therapies aimed at redirecting anxiety and strengthening focus, could be beneficial in reducing GAD symptoms, according to the study.
