Patterns of brain activity associated with anxiety in monkeys are passed from parent to child, researchers report today (July 30) in the Journal of Neuroscience. The results could give clues to the heritability of severe anxiety in humans and how to treat it.
In the study, Ned Kalin of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and colleagues studied the stress response and cortisol levels of 378 young monkeys after an intruder entered the animal cage. The researchers also took scans of the monkeys’ brains while the animals were anesthetized and found that the monkeys with greater stress responses had differences in brain activity in the extended amygdala compared with those that were less stressed.
The scans showed that, in stressed monkeys’ brains, two regions in the extended amygdala— the central nucleus and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis—exhibited similar responses. When activity in one region ...
