Year: 2007
Type: article
Abstract: Anxiety disorders are amongst the most common psychiatric disorders affecting \napproximately 25% of all adults. Fear and anxiety have many shared neuroanatomical and neurochemical \ncharacteristics. In this paper we refer to a) fear conditioning, (i.e. after a harmless and an \naversive stimulus have coincided, the harmless stimulus encountered on its own will cause fear), b) \nthe fear response, including the effects on the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, c) \nsensitization, which refers to a general hyperresponsivity of the fear circuits, d) fear memory, and \ne) extinction, the new learning that the harmless stimulus no longer forecasts a threat. The role \nof the amygdala and long-term potentiation (LTP) are discussed. Possible anatomical correlates of \nanxiety disorders and different therapeutic modalities, including the novel drug D-cycloserine, are \nbriefly discussed.
Language: English
Topic: Memory and Neural Mechanisms
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2133660844