Anxiety Neuroscience and Neurobiology

Anxiety and the Brain: The Forebrain’s Role in Social Decisions Unveiled

Researchers discovered that anxious individuals utilize a less optimal region of the forebrain when navigating socially challenging situations compared to their non-anxious counterparts. This was determined through brain scans that mapped regions active during simulated social scenarios.

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A New Model Predicts Depression and Anxiety Using Artificial Intelligence and Social Media

Utilizing data from Twitter and applying natural language processing artificial intelligence algorithms, researchers created a new, accurate prediction model for depression and anxiety.

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The fNIRS evaluation of frontal and temporal lobe cortical activation in Chinese first-episode medication-naïve and recurrent depression during a verbal fluency task

… Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) identifies neurophysiological differences between psychiatric disorders by assessing cortical hemodynamic function. Few trials have studied differences in brain functional activity between first-episode medication-naïve depression patients (FMD) and recurrent major depression (RMD). We aimed to determine the differences between FMD and RMD in oxygenated hemoglobin concentration ([oxy-Hb]), and to investigate the

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Etiology of anxious and fearful behavior in juvenile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (CLN3 disease)

… During the terminal phase, the cognitive developmental age of JNCL patients is below 2 years. At this stage of mental development individuals act primarily from a concrete world of consciousness and do not have the cognitive ability to encounter a normal anxiety response. Instead, they experience the evolutionary basic emotion of fear, and as

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Prefrontal engrams of long-term fear memory perpetuate pain perception

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 06 April 2023; doi:10.1038/s41593-023-01291-x Can erasing bad memories relieve pain? Stegemann et al. uncover the cellular basis of fear–pain interactions, reporting that fear potentiates pain via memories encoded in prefrontal engrams. Blocking these memory traces reduces chronic pain in mice.

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How Prozac Increases Brain Plasticity

Fluoxetine (Prozac), a common antidepressant, was found to enhance the erasure of learned fear responses and facilitate spatial pattern learning in mice. The study also found the TrkB receptor in PV+ interneurons plays a crucial role in these effects, which may offer new possibilities for the development of psychiatric treatments targeting brain plasticity.

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Newly Discovered Trigger for Major Depression Opens New Possibilities for Treatments

Glycine, a common amino acid, appears to play a role in the development of major depression, anxiety, and other mood-related disorders.

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Abnormal focal segments in left uncinate fasciculus in adults with obsessive–compulsive disorder

Although the specific role of the uncinate fasciculus (UF) in emotional processing in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) has been investigated, the exact focal abnormalities in the UF have not been identified. The aim of the current study was to identify focal abnormalities in the white matter (WM) microstructure of the UF and to determine

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