Receptor binding and drug modulation in anxiety

Abstract

Anxiety is an emotion that allows an individual to prepare for, or respond to, changes in the environment. For many people, however, this emotion is expressed inappropriately and impairs their lives causing considerable distress and disability. These disorders cause a great deal of personal distress, result in reduced life expectancy and, in the UK alone, have an estimated cost of approximately pound 5 billion per year. Despite a great deal of research, an adequate account of the mechanisms that underlie these human disorders is still lacking. An understanding of the brain substrates underlying these disorders is likely to provide such adequate explanations, but one of the principal challenges facing the investigators has been the reciprocal mapping of pre-clinical and clinical knowledge. Altogether, the last 10 years have seen a consolidation of imaging techniques. These are now mature in many areas and are likely to provide fundamental contributions in our understanding of human psychopharmacology.