Clinical and Basic
Neuroscience Research
Training Program in Psychiatry

Anxiety Disorders Research

The relative roles of noradrenergic, serotonergic, dopaminergic, and gabaergic systems in anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is being studied at both the preclinical and clinical levels.

Clinical treatment and challenge studies in humans are dissecting the interactions of noradrenergic and serotonergic systems in the treatment and expression of anxiety disorders, as well as extending these same methods to recently implicated neuropeptides (e.g., cholecystokinin, pentagastrin).

Distinct OCD subtypes have engendered interest in the role of dopamine and certain neuropeptides in addition to serotonin based on the phenomenology (e.g., tic vs. non-tic spectrum) and response to pharmacology (i.e., neuroleptic addition). Neuroreceptor imaging studies are now beginning to evaluate the status of pre- and post-synaptic dopaminergic physiology in these subtypes.

The neurobiology of anxiety is being studied through both animal and humans models of fear-conditioned startle. Years of research into the neurochemical and neuroanatomical components of this basic anxiety response in rats has provided a basic science model for understanding comparable clinical phenomena in patients. In specific, fear-conditioned startle holds particular promise in the human laboratory for understanding and treating post-traumatic stress and related anxiety disorders. Primate studies employing functional MRI are imaging the response of locus coeruleus neurons to intravenous yohimbine, a potent pharmacological provocateur of panic in patients with anxiety disorders.

Faculty related to Anxiety Disorder Research.

Coric
Southwick

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