Are Aspies more sensitive to fear and/or anxiety?

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I've heard about our amygdalas being bigger. I dunno much about the amygdala, but apparently people with smaller or damaged ones have less fear. Since we're known to be anxious, fearful, and sensitive I was wondering if there was any connection between that and our bigger amygdalas.

On a side note, could anyone tell me the determinating factors of how the amygdala determines how strongly someone feels fear comapred to others? Like if bigger means more fear, if certain connections or interactions with other brain structures leads to more/less fear, etc. Please don't paste a wiki article lol. Like I said, I'm not looking for a definition of it, I just wanna know what factors of the amygdala determines how much fear/anxiety one feels.

I find that I'm more fearful than most people that I know. I'm always afraid that if I walk home from my clubhouse in the dark, that I'm going to get beat up, or raped and killed.

I think we might have to thread our way through several mazes to come up with the truth on that one. The fear and anxiety carried by anyone is conditioned by the bullying, mugging, and harassment they live with. I don't know how you'd get an Asperger's person the use as an unspoiled standard, unless you tried a newborn whose parents haven't figured it out yet.

I'm not as knowledgeable as I'd like to be regarding to the structure of the brain, though that's an interesting insight regarding the amygdala. I might need to read up on that one. I do know that I'm significantly more anxious, fearful, and sensitive than most other people, and this influences every aspect of my life.
For instance, on a typical weekday morning, I get significant anxiety just thinking about the work day ahead. Of course, that could relate to my experiences as well as the structure of my brain. For instance, I'm presently subbing in a preschool classroom where the two assistants very clearly dislike me, have a very low opinion of my abilities, criticize and make a federal case of my every mistake/ slip-up/ miscommunication/ failure to pick up on their telapathy/ or magically absorb the plans they've discussed in whispers to each other, while I'm occupied in an activity with the children out of earshot. It doesn't help that their treatment of me reminds me of years of being bullied, ridiculed, and constantly found lacking. When I'm subbing in a classroom where the assistants are somewhat more accepting of me, the anticipatory anxiety in the morning is still there, but to a lesser extent.
My point is, it's difficult to determine the root of my own unusually high anxiety level, and I would imagine that plenty of others here could say the same. I suppose it's a variation on the nature vs. nurture question. I could delve deeper into that here, as I have plenty of thoughts on the matter. I won't do that here, because if I get started, it will be very difficult for me to stop.

Well, in my case, my fear of social situations is very over-sensitive(although not as bad these days), yet my fear of just about anything else, is very diminished. I think it's because the social fear(phobia) used to be soooo bad, that I've become desensitized to all other 'threats'. For example....Riding motocross isn't so scary, when you get a more intense physical reaction(adrenalyne) being approached by a pretty girl.

Yeah, I tend to be fearful of things people wouldn't even think twice about. Another thing I want to bring up is cortical arousal. Introverts are known to be more cortically aroused and extroverts are known to be less cortically aroused. This is what makes introverts to be overstimulated in social situations and extroverts to be unbearably bored on their own.

I wonder if the combination of this and the structure of our amygdala causes us to be more fearful?

What's cortical arousal? I googled it but I don't understand.

I am prone to fear and anxiety. And I've been having some problems with it recently and I've had to join a mental health group at college, no I'm not going mad.

Cortical means having to do with the cerebral cortex, so it basically means the stimulation of the cerebral cortex.

@MONKEY: Damn that's harsh. Do you think your fear or anxiety stems from the fact that you process things in more detail, which leads to you being overstimulated?

@jawbrodt: That's pretty interesting. I'd think if someone is anxious of something like being approached by a chick, then a situation just a motorcycle accident would be even scarier to a neurotic person than one who is less neurotic.

I tend to panic over health issues. As a tot I used to freak out over things that probably weren't even scary. I guess something about the way they appeared in my mind didn't register and I'd start crying.

You'd probably get a response closer to what you're looking for if you ask this on a neurology forum. I don't know anything about the amygdala apart from that sociopaths ones are significantly smaller than normal. If that explains their lack of anxiety and remorse then I suppose the opposite in us (larger than normal) could produce the opposite "symptoms". If only things were that simple...

read this:

http://www.frontiersin.org/neuroscience ... 2007/html/

"The current version of the amygdala theory of autism assumes a hypo-functional amydala, which leads to lack or inappropriateness of social behavior in autism. In this view, autists fail to assign emotional significance to their environment and for this reason are not interested in others, do not attend to faces, and fail to engage in normal social interaction. However, based on the result in the VPA model of autism and observations obtained in autistic humans, we propose that this view may be not correct and that quite to the contrary, the amygdala in the autistic individual may be hyper-reactive which leads to rapid excessive responses to socio-emotional stimuli. In this view, the autistic person would be overwhelmed with emotional significance and salience. As a consequence, the subject would want to avoid this emotional overload and would have to withdraw from situations, such as social encounters, which are rich in complex stimuli."

You raise interesting questions regarding the amygdala's relationship to autism. A number of researchers are currently looking at this, but as far as I know nothing conclusive has yet been determined. More sophisticated tools to study the brain are continually being developed, and our understanding of the brain is growing relatively rapidly. It is known that the amygdala plays an important role in fear, and that it generally works together with other brain structures.

Where did you find "people with smaller or damaged ones have less fear"? Someone else posted the following here a while ago, but I have been unable to find any scientific basis for it: "The amygdala on the right is specialized for fear and anxiety. The amygdala on the left is specialized for more 'self-affirming' emotions, most importantly happiness, bliss, and elation." I am skeptical of all such affirmations made without a proper citation.

Although many autists do, indeed, suffer from anxiety and heightened fear responses, it needs to be pointed out that not all do. This has been discussed on previous threads here. I have very muted fear/intimidation and anger responses, and there are a number of other members on this site who are similar.

Could it also be possible that both hypo- and hyper-sensitive amygdalas can be found in autistics? (not both in the same person)

Most of my recent problems have stemmed from a life long phobia of being sick/other people being sick. One night in early January I couldn't sleep because I had indegestion and acid and I was convinced it was a stomach bug and had a panic attack over it, I was OK though. After that night that fear had stuck with me and any twinge I feel anywhere in my stomach sets me off, the stress has caused me to have alot of stomach problems like acid and that scares me everytime to I have a panic attack or something. It's making me not want to eat as much and I get really nervous when going out, and I've never had problems with that before until recently and I'm losing my independance that I waited for for 16 years.
And I am sensitive to alot of things so that has a large role to play.

For stomach/acid problems, I take yogurt pills. They're all natural and they work! If you had something to rely on, might you be a little less anxious? Or would the anxiety just shift to somewhere else? Maybe it's worth a try.

I hope you find peace, in the body and in the family and in the world.