Episode 1: Neuroscience of Anxiety

Dec. 22, 2021

Whether it's meeting your ex at a party or your upcoming presentation at work, we have all felt the sinking feeling of anxiety. Come and find out a little bit about what's happening upstairs in this bite-sized look at the brain regions, connections, and neurotransmitters involved in anxiety processing and regulation. 

If you have any comments, questions, concerns, queries, or complaints, please email me at [email protected] or DM me at @NeuroscienceAmateurHour on Instagram. Citations and relevant papers below: 

• Price, J.S., An Evolutionary Perspective on Anxiety and Anxiety Disorders, New Insights into Anxiety Disorders (2012). 
• Davis, M., The Role of the Amygdala in Fear and Anxiety, Annual Review Neuroscience (1992). 
• Duval, Javanbakht, Liberzon., Neural circuits in anxiety and stress disorders: a focused review, Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management (2015). 
• Ventura Silva et al., Excitotoxic lesions in the central nucleus of the amygdala attenuate stress-induced anxiety behavior, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (2013). 
• Levar et al., GABA concentrations in the anterior cingulate cortex are associated with fear network function and fear recovery in humans, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2017)
• Fuchs, Flugge., Cellular consequences of stress and depression, Dialogues Clinical Neuroscience, (2004)
• Lechin et al., Effects of buspirone on plasma neurotransmitters in healthy subjects, Journal of Neural Transmission (1998)
• Botterill et al., Bidirectional regulation of cognitive and anxiety-like behaviors by dentate gyrus mossy cells in male and female mice, Journal of Neuroscience (2021)
• Martin et al., The Neurobiology of Anxiety Disorders: Brain Imaging, Genetics, and Psychoneuroendocrinology, Psychiatric Clinics of North America (2013)
• Cominski et al., The role of the hippocampus in avoidance learning and anxiety vulnerability, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (2014). 
• LeBlanc et al., Striatopallidal neurons control avoidance behaviors in exploratory tasks, Psychiatry (2018). 
• Adhikari et al., Synchronized Activity between the Ventral Hippocampus and the Medial Prefrontal Cortex during Anxiety, Neuron (2010). 
• Akimova, E., Lanzenberger, R., Kasper, S., The Seratonin-1A Receptor in Anxiety Disorders, Psychiatry (2009). 
• Blanco et al., Effects of medial prefrontal cortex lesions on anxiety-like behavior in restrained and non-restrained rats, Behavioral Brain Research, (2009). 
• Qiao et al., Aberrant Functional Network Connectivity as a Biomarker of Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (2017). 

Support the show