A Brief Review to Support the Neurobiology of the Safety-Oriented Personality Style or Phobicentric Psychopathology (SOPS/PCP)

Abstract

Background: Since SOPS/PCP entered the psychological literature, it has lacked empirical confirmation of its neurobiology. With greater clarity of the unit of interest being investigated (e.g. Generalized Anxiety Disorder), the findings are more easily interpretable. Applying neuroscience to psychopathology is not exempt, which SOPS/PCP is a case in point. This personality type claims to be “purer” than the DSM can produce thus making the study of SOPS/PCP more appealing. As such the search for its neurobiological underpinnings would produce informative and understandable results. The areas of the brain addressed in this Review are common to many models and functional imaging of these areas has helped considerably in promoting objective methods of accessing how anxiety disorder is maintained and its pathogenesis differentiated from other conditions. The Default Mode Network and amygdala play central roles in this process and their dysfunction may be at the root of anxiety disorder. Indeed, the study of the neurobiology of human fear-anxiety is complex, in a way that animal studies, its precursor, could not fully account. Purpose: The present study is aimed at providing evidence of the neural status of SOPS/PCP. Method: Selective information from neurobiological sources mainly shows that SOPS/PCP originates from and usually adopts the same behavioral characteristics as all other fear-anxiety states. Results and Discussion: The results of this study mainly confirm the previously hypothesized biological underpinnings of SOPS/PCP as presented by Bickersteth et al., (2018) . Conclusions: This study depicts the DMN and amygdala as essential “players” in the fear anxiety sphere, where the PFC also functions to modulate anxiety disorder. This much less than exhaustive presentation of the topic has served to also indicate a need for a more adequate model than currently.