Abstract:

During decades cognitive psychopathologists have resisted to make any connection between affective disorders and brain malfunctioning. This reluctance was induced by their proclaimed disciplinary independence towards psychiatry and neurology. Yet, in the last 15 years a great amount of experimental data contested the view according to which affective disorders are just "software malfunctioning" due to inappropriate cognitive schemata. These data are coming mainly from developmental cognitive neuroscience, behavioral genetics and neurophysiological studies on experimental animals, and strongly suggest an innate predisposition towards anxiety, and a continuous "red line" of anxiety symptoms from early infancy to adolescence.

Keywords: anxiety, cognitive psychopathology, developmental cognitive neuroscience, genetics of anxiety