The peripheral sympathetic nervous system: its role in normal and pathologic anxiety. export export add to my list email print share

Peripheral sympathetic nervous system stimulate the body’s fight or flight response regardless of the emotional state of a person. The level of body awareness depends on different psychologic factors where anxiety plays an important role. One factor is acute stress; it activates sympathetic response to nonanxious as well as anxious persons.

Nonanxious persons display intense responses to awkward situation but it can easily return to lower autonomic levels and be back to normal conditions than those anxious persons. Anxiety disorder patients have increase sympathetic tone even when they do not feel anxious. Lastly, both normal and anxiety patients react to sympathetic arousal under standardized stress task.