- Researchers have found the origin of anxiety
in the hippocampus of mice.
This has far-reaching effects
on how we look at and treat anxiety in humans.
That's what I'm talking about today.
I'm Doctor Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and this channel is about mental health education
and self-improvement.
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Today's video is more of a newsflash than a how-to video.
But I do think it's important
because of how it affects our attitude about anxiety.
Anxiety can be very crippling
because you can struggle with feeling weak
and unable to deal with life
because you can't stop being anxious.
Well, this research gives us some evidence
that anxiety is controlled by certain cells in the brain,
and is not based on how strong of a person you are.
I have the reference to the research article
in the description of this video.
Neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center
and University of California San Francisco
collaborated on a study
and discovered that certain brain cells
in the hippocampus of mice
fire when the mice became anxious
and those cells would trigger anxiety behaviors.
Mice are used a lot to study human behavior
because their brains are similar enough to humans
that we can translate what we see in them to us.
The cells were found in the hippocampus,
which is an area of the brain
where we form memories.
So here we have a connection
between anxiety and memory,
and here's how they discovered this:
they inserted small microscopes
into the hippocampus of the mice.
They watched the mice move around
freely in their surroundings,
while looking at their brains.
Mice feel threatened when they are in open spaces
with no protection around them.
So when they put the mice
into this kind of situation,
they would exhibit their usual fear behavior,
and then the researchers noticed
certain areas of the brain
that lit up and were more active than other cells.
They used a beam of light to turn the cells on and off.
Then they experimented with turning the cells off
and putting the mice back into the open space.
With the cells turned off,
the mice were not fearful.
They would easily walk around,
away from their protective area with no problem.
When the cells were turned back on,
they would become fearful and retreat.
Then they performed the opposite experiment.
This time, they kept the mice in their cozy area
and activated the anxiety cell.
The mice became anxious and fearful,
even though they were in their protected area.
So by turning on the anxiety cell,
the researchers could make the mice anxious,
even when they had no reason to feel anxious.
If you've ever experienced generalized anxiety disorder,
isn't that what it's like?
You can have a panic attack
and have no idea why you're feeling that way
or why you're anxious.
There's a couple of reasons this research excited me.
One is that it adds some legitimacy
to the idea that anxiety disorders
have something real behind them.
We know that with anxiety,
you get elevated levels of cortisol and adrenaline,
but that's the secondary downstream effect.
This discovery takes us to where things start upstream.
Keep in mind, we're talking about anxiety disorders,
not situational anxiety that you might experience
if your house were on fire,
or if you were told you had to take a test in an hour
and you weren't prepared for it.
This is for conditions, like generalized anxiety
or obsessive compulsive disorder.
The second reason this excites me
is because with this kind of information,
we can develop new approaches to treating anxiety.
If the researchers can find a specific receptor
on the cell that's unique to that cell,
then it's possible to create a drug
that targets that receptor
in a way that it reduces anxiety.
Now, we're a long way from off
from developing that kind of treatment,
but these kinds of discoveries
start the process of creating new treatments.
If you suffer with anxiety,
check out my anxiety playlist.
Also, I did a video on mindfulness and depression.
However, mindfulness can also help with anxiety.
And with that video,
I included a mindfulness audio
that you can download to help you with anxiety.
If you're part of my email community,
you would have already gotten that audio
and that video published.
I also did a progressive muscle relaxation audio as well,
that you would have gotten
if you were part of the email community.
So join the email community,
and then you'll get these things automatically.
That's it, take care.