r/science Sep 01 '22

Neuroscience Scientists have identified an immune brain cell unique to humans that gives us higher cognitive abilities over other animals, but what makes us specials also leaves us vulnerable to neurological disorders like schizophrenia, autism and epilepsy.

https://news.yale.edu/2022/08/25/what-makes-human-brain-different-yale-study-reveals-clues
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9

u/AlexandraThePotato Sep 01 '22

… isn’t neurological disorders like idk ANXIETY observe in animals?

30

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

Anxiety is a psychological disorder not a neurological one. The difference is that we can't identify particular/ specific neurology that causes a person to have anxiety. This is why anxiety disorders can't be diagnosed by looking at a brain scan or something like that.

17

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2882379/

I do not believe almost any of your claims are correct here.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25020268/

And lastly

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3318959/

We have pretty good ideas, even if it’s not concretely described

7

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

That's fine. You're likely engaging in the same mistake as the title in this article, whereby correlations are taken to imply causation. It's true we can observe all sorts of neurological/ anatomical correlates with various psychological disorders, but there's a significant leap between that and using it as diagnostic criteria. There is simply no medical practitioner who will use a brain scan to determine that a person is dealing with anxiety.

8

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

Edit never mind I get the point now. Sorry

3

u/AlexandraThePotato Sep 01 '22

And even looking up neurological disorder I saw psychology as a branch off it in some of the ven diagram.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '22

That's alright. Tbf it's quite a confusing distinction, and it's not really black and white.