Fear changes how the brain processes innocuous information

患有焦虑症的人基本上把世界视为一个危险的地方。他们对创伤或恐惧相关的线索表现出夸大的恐惧反应。然而，我们对他们如何处理日常经验中遇到的无害线索或信息知之甚少。最近的证据表明，恐惧状态会使老鼠对无害信息的处理从皮层转移到皮层下的大脑区域。该项目源于这些新发现，旨在确定这种皮层到皮层下的转变对无害信息的处理意味着什么，以及它是否可以通过消除恐惧的治疗来逆转。该项目旨在阐明恐惧如何调节焦虑症的信息处理。

People who suffer from anxiety disorders essentially treat the world as a dangerous place. They exhibit exaggerated fear responses to trauma or phobia-related cues. Little is known, however, about how they process innocuous cues or information encountered in the course of everyday experience. Recent evidence shows that a state of fear shifts the processing of innocuous information from cortical to subcortical brain regions in the rat. This project originates in these novel findings and aims to identify what this cortical-to-subcortical shift means for processing of innocuous information and whether it can be reversed by treatments that eliminate fear. The project aims to shed light on how fear regulates information processing in anxiety disorders.