Different cell populations in the brain control distinct features of anxiety, including breathing changes, behavioral avoidance, and negative subjective state.

“there's a set of cells that control the breathing changes and there's another set of cells right nearby that control the behavioral changes avoiding risky situations and there's yet a third set of cells that control the negative balance the internal state”

“behavioral states that that mammals have they can be cleanly broken apart into these features and we could show that with optogenetics”

“we used in 2013 we did an optogenetics experiment that targeted different uh parts of what we thought could be the anxiety pathway and we found that indeed different cells control each of these different parts there's a set of cells that control the breathing changes and there's another set of cells right nearby that control the behavioral changes avoiding risky situations and there's yet a third set of cells that control the negative valence the internal state each cleanly controls a separate feature of anxiety”

“we could make animals avoid the open area the exposed realm that that people and mice but we don't many people don't like being out in exposed areas mice definitely don't because that's when they're going to get eaten we could make mice in be much more uh avoidant of an open space with a specific cell type optogenetic intervention but the mice didn't care that this was happening there was no negative balance to it and this was so interesting that we could create the behavioral avoidance of anxiety without the mice without the negative feeling having this negativity”