NeuroImage: How fear turns into anxiety.

July 17, 2020 // --- A team led by DrElaine LBearer of the University of New Mexico published in the journal neuroimage, which looked at the associated behavior and brain activity by looking at magnetic resonance images of the brain before and after exposure to terrible odorsSeoxyamine transporter protein (SERT) is a key factor in regulating anxiety and a major target for psychoactive drugs such as cocaine and antidepressants such as paracetamolThe absence of the SERT gene (SERT-KO) creates vulnerability to anxiety, thus providing a unique model for learning how frightening experiences cause anxiety in the body(Photo source:UNM researchers compared the behavior and brain activity of normal people and SERT-KO to determine the neural correlation between anxiety - those in areas where anxiety SERT-KO was active rather than in normal subjectsTo highlight active neurons, they used manganese, an non-toxic ion that can mark neurons with active features in magnetic resonance imagesIn the computational analysis of these whole-brain images, the authors came up with a graph of the activity of the entire brain before and after a brief exposure to a terrible odorThey found differences in neural activity in 45 sub-regions of the brainSome areas are activated by frightening odors, and some areas are later presentDuring anxiety, coordination between regions changes, which can indicate anxiety signals within the brain, or incongruity between brain regions, which often occurs when we are frightened or anxious"We now know that anxiety causes different brain activity than acute fear responses," Bearer said"As a result of anxiety, nerve activity in many specific areas of the brain increases, and normal coordination between regions is lost"(Bioon.com) Source: How fear transforms into anxiety original source: Taylor WUselman et al, Evolution of brain-wide activity y in the behad mouse behind awake fear bylongitudinalalse acute-enhanced MRI, NeuroImage (2020)DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116975.