Many of us worry from time to time. We fret over finances, feel anxious about job interviews, or get nervous about social gatherings. These feelings can be normal or even helpful. They may give us a boost of energy or help us focus. But for people with anxiety disorders, they can be overwhelming.

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“Anxiety disorders are one of the most treatable mental health problems we see,” says Dr. Daniel Pine, an NIH neuroscientist and psychiatrist. “Still, for reasons we don’t fully understand, most people who have these problems don’t get the treatments that could really help them.”

One of the most common types of anxiety disorder is social anxiety disorder, or social phobia. It affects both women and men equally—a total of about 15 million U.S. adults. Without treatment, social phobia can last for years or even a lifetime. People with social phobia may worry for days or weeks before a social event. They’re often embarrassed, self-conscious, and afraid of being judged. They find it hard to talk to others. They may blush, sweat, tremble, or feel sick to their stomach when around other people.

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People with generalized anxiety disorder worry endlessly over everyday issues—like health, money, or family problems—even if they realize there’s little cause for concern. They startle easily, can’t relax, and can’t concentrate. They find it hard to fall asleep or stay asleep. They may get headaches, muscle aches, or unexplained pains. Symptoms often get worse during times of stress.

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We all use different strategies to adjust our emotions, often without thinking about it. If something makes you angry, you may try to tamp down your emotion to avoid making a scene. If something annoys you, you might try to ignore it, modify it, or entirely avoid it.

But these strategies can turn harmful over time. For instance, people with social phobia might decide to avoid attending a professional conference so they can keep their anxiety in check. That makes them lose opportunities at work and miss chances to meet people and make friends.

Gross and others are examining the differences between how people with and without anxiety disorders regulate their emotions. “We’re finding that CBT is helpful in part because it teaches people to more effectively use emotion regulation strategies,” Gross says. “They then become more competent in their ability to use these strategies in their everyday lives.”

“It’s important to be aware that many different kinds of treatments are available, and people with anxiety disorders tend to have very good responses to those treatments,” Pine adds. The best way to start is often by talking with your physician. If you’re a parent, talk with your child’s pediatrician. “These health professionals are generally prepared to help identify such problems and help patients get the appropriate care they need,” Pine says

I vividly remember my doctor first telling me I had tinnitus. He told me that my labyrnthitis in my left ear may have contributed, but essentially, I’d caused a spike of hearing loss in my left ear, which confused my brain into thinking it had to make up for the loss by amplifying specific frequencies for me all the time, forever. To simplify, it sounds like a tiny person has jumped in my ear, stomped on all their distortion pedals, and then put put their tiny guitar next to their tiny amplifier to cause a wall of feedback. You know, like the end of a Mogwai gig or something. But in this scenario playing out in my skull, the crew don’t walk back on stage and switch off the amplifiers. It never ever stops.

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The first thing you do when you develop tinnitus is outright refuse to accept it. […] I bought a tinnitus pillow, which plays music into your ears as you sleep, as a form of distraction. That was fun for a while, but didn’t help either. Finally, I went to a therapist who gave me ear plugs that generated white noise. I was told to listen to them for a few hours a day, but these were the worst. They were a constant reminder that I had a hearing problem.

As I ticked off various treatments, it became increasingly clear that nothing was working. I started to dread falling asleep. In fact, I started getting so drunk each night that I would knock myself out, so that I didn’t have to face listening to the sound of regret screaming in my ear. But drinking only worked until I became dependant. For some reason, it also made the ringing worse. I knew deep down that if I exposed myself to loud music for prolonged amounts of time that I would exacerbate an already crippling affliction, but I also found that without listening to any music, or some sort of noise at a low level all day long, I was just alone with that ringing. And, let me tell you, it drives you insane. Alone with the ringing is a dangerous place to be.

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Fast forward to present day and here I am, in a silent room in my Berlin flat, with my beloved radio turned off, writing about the screaming in my ear. Yep, he’s still here, with bells on. The radio is off because I need silence to write. But I dread silence. I hate it now. My mum told me to be careful using the word “hate” as it is such a strong word. She told me that you can only truly hate something having loved it first. Well, I f***ing loved silence. Silence really was golden. These days I find it hard to believe it ever existed.

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The irony of this entire article is that I really don’t like talking about tinnitus. It only makes me more aware of it and it drives me through the roof. Maybe that’s why the issue has been such a slow one to gather pace, because the last thing sufferers want to do is talk about their suffering. But people need to know. If you love loud music then enjoy it, but enjoy it sensibly. If you frequent live music venues on a regular basis, buy a decent pair of ear plugs. If you listen to music on headphones, make sure you give your ears regular breaks. And if you want to help push things forward, talk to people about tinnitus. Help us spread the word. There is so much research that needs to be done and for this, and so much money that needs to be raised for the BTA. Let me tell you: silence is absolutely beautiful, so make sure you cherish it.

My personal experience was not helped by having seen two ENT specialists who failed to appreciate how tinnitus would affect an introverted, silence-loving person like me who lived alone, despite me telling them all this. Also, my relatives seemed to think I was overreacting to my situation. Fortunately, my friends were more supportive.

Neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh have pinpointed a specific neuronal mechanism that helps explain how anxiety can disrupt the decision-making process and often leads to poor choices. Decision-making is the cognitive process of making a choice between a number of possible alternatives that often involves weighing the risks, rewards, and consequences of your actions.

There is growing evidence that the cognitive process of decision-making depends on proper functioning of specific neurons within subregions of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The prefrontal cortex—which is housed in the frontal lobes of the cerebrum—is the newest part of the human brain in terms of our evolution.

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One reason the researchers of this study were motivated to pinpoint the neurobiological impact of distress on decision-making is because anxiety is such a prominent and debilitating component of most psychiatric disorders. Anxiety is often a key player in major depressive disorder (MDD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorders (OCD), and addiction.

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Healthy brain development requires a combination of brain plasticity, which fortifies certain connections so signals can be transmitted more efficiently … and synaptic pruning, which causes other connections to atrophy. Many studies have shown that chronic anxiety and high levels of the “stress hormone” cortisol disrupt brain structure and functional connectivity of the PFC.

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Reducing anxiety is especially important during chaotic times, when you feel overwhelmed, or that your life is out of control. During times of distress, the latest research shows that people are likely to make poor decisions which can exacerbate anxiety, lead to more bad decisions and snowball into a downward spiral.

Decision-making is in the locus of your control. We all have the power to break patterns of behavior simply by making better decisions, but this is often easier said than done. That said, even when you’re stuck in a cycle of rut-like thinking and behavior, a change of attitude and decision-making can turn your life around. This new study shows that reducing your anxiety levels might be the first step to starting a life-changing domino effect that empowers you to perpetually make better choices.

Remember, taking a few deep breaths will instantly activate your parasympathetic nervous system and vagus nerve which slows down your heart rate, lowers blood pressure, and puts you in a calmer state of mind. Diaphragmatic breathing is always going be your best first line of defense for combating anxiety. If you ever find yourself in an overstimulating and stressful situation that requires a rapid fire decision, I’d recommend that you remember to slow down and take a few deep breaths before planning your course of action.

If you’re one of the millions of people pining to own a Google self-driving car, you better make yourself comfortable, because you may be in for a much longer wait than you ever expected.

Not only that: There’s a distinct chance that once you get behind the wheel of the first commercial version of the Google car, it may not take you where you need to go.

Brain scans have shown that those who are bilingual have denser gray matter than their monolingual counterparts, with the densest gray matter found in those who learned the second language earliest.

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Beyond scans, bilingualism has proven to provide tangible, real-world benefits. Researchers from London’s Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience studied 22 native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between ages 2 and 34. They found that those who had learned English at a young age had a greater proficiency in reading, writing, and speaking in their native language.

Additionally, because bilingual people switch between languages, their minds are more flexible and agile, and they develop more control over their cognitive processes. Scientists call this “enhanced executive control,” but in practical terms, it means advantages in areas such as

• Problem-solving
• Memory
• Thought
• Sustained attention

Cars were never necessary in cities, and in many respects they worked against the fundamental purpose of cities: to bring many people together in a space where social, cultural and economic synergies could develop. Because cars require so much space for movement and parking, they work against this objective — they cause cities to expand in order to provide the land cars need. Removing cars from cities would help to improve the quality of urban life.

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Battery-powered and driverless cars do not affect this situation to any great degree. They still demand too much street space for their movement and use too much energy. The movement of significant numbers of cars through the streets will always damage streets’ social use, regardless of how quiet and safe the cars may be.

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Removing vehicles from our streets would make urban life cheaper, safer, quieter and more pleasant. Repurposed parking spaces and, in some cases, travel lanes would provide ample land for walking and cycling, plus any essential street-running public services, such as light rail, trash collection and emergency services. The surplus land can be devoted to public purposes […]

“We found that people who eat chocolate at least once a week tend to perform better cognitively,” said Elias. “It’s significant—it touches a number of cognitive domains.”

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Not only was the sample size large—a shade under 1,000 people when the new questionnaire was added—but the cognitive data was perhaps the most comprehensive of any study ever undertaken.

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In scientific terms, eating chocolate was significantly associated with superior “visual-spatial memory and [organization], working memory, scanning and tracking, abstract reasoning, and the mini-mental state examination.”

But as Crichton explained, these functions translate to every day tasks, “such as remembering a phone number, or your shopping list, or being able to do two things at once, like talking and driving at the same time.”