A review written recently by senior postdoctoral scientist, Kevin G. Mulvihill and Professor Angela Roberts in PDN will be published in Trends in Neurosciences by Cell Press. Their review provides a novel perspective on understanding the multiple faces of anxiety, with a focus on the highly varied functions of the frontal lobes. They bring together their own neuroscientific findings on threat reactivity in non-human primates with psychological and neural accounts of the generation and regulation of emotion in humans and a rodent model of threat imminence recently adapted for humans.
In a healthy functioning individual, the frontal lobe is intimately associated with a wide range of appraisal processes underlying the generation and regulation of emotion. This aspect of the brain helps us to navigate an emotionally turbulent world while maintaining a relatively even keel. However, deficits in these appraisal processes, which Roberts & Mulvihill argue relate to specific, localised functions of frontal cortex, including attention, action control and valuation, may lead to profound pathological anxiety. Critically, the nature of these deficits likely constitute different forms of anxious states which, likely, respond to different forms of treatment. However, the underlying neurobiological substrates that link different anxious states with different treatment strategies remain elusive.
Roberts and Mulvihill, in their review, provide a synopsis of the shared functional organisation of the frontal lobe in both humans and non-human primates. Such a similarity allows for causal investigations of the brain mechanisms underlying anxious states through an evolutionarily grounded lens in the marmoset. This work will open up avenues for linking specific forms of cognitive deficits with distinct neural circuits. Ultimately, when applied to humans, this will improve the capacity for clinicians to better target each individual patient’s specific neurocognitive aetiology with an effective treatment. An approach such as this is necessary if success is to be found in treating the many faces of anxiety.
Read the full paper at www.cell.com/trends/neurosciences/fulltext/S0166-2236(24)00126-7