‘Anxiety Cells’ Identified in the Brain’s Hippocampus
New York, NY (Jan. 31, 2018)—Do your palms sweat when you walk down a poorly lit street at night? That feeling may be traced to the firing of newly identified “anxiety” cells deep inside your brain, according to research from neuroscientists at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
The researchers found the cells in the brains of mice, inside a structure called the hippocampus. But the cells probably also exist in humans, says Rene Hen, PhD, professor of neuroscience and pharmacology (in psychiatry) at Columbia and one of the study’s senior investigators. Read the full article
Columbia and UCSF neuroscientists have found, in mice, that certain cells fire when the animal is anxious, triggering anxiety-related behaviors
