Anxiety disorders are the most common class of mental illness in the US, affecting 40 million
individuals annually. Anxiety is an adaptive response to a stressful or unpredictable life …

This review describes the relationship between the National Institute of Mental Health (USA)
Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) Negative Valence System related to responses to threat …

Recent advances in surgical neuromodulation have enabled chronic and continuous
intracranial monitoring during everyday life. We used this opportunity to identify neural …

How do brain mechanisms create maladaptive attractions? Here intense maladaptive
attractions are created in laboratory rats by pairing optogenetic channelrhodopsin (ChR2) …

Background Childhood maltreatment is one of the most important preventable risk factors for
a wide variety of psychiatric disorders. Further, when psychiatric disorders emerge in …

Environmental contexts can inform animals of potential threats, though it is currently
unknown how context biases the selection of defensive behavior. Here we investigated …

Fear and anxiety can be described as emotional and physical responses to predictable and
unpredictable threats. While the amygdala is necessary for context and cued fear …

Rationale Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are considered first-line
medication for anxiety-like disorders such as panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder …

Fear-potentiated startle (FPS) has been widely used to study fear processing in humans and
rodents. Human studies showed higher startle amplitudes and exaggerated fear reactivity to …

The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is a forebrain region highly responsive to
stress that expresses corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) and is implicated in mood …