Inside Anxiety

Anxiety affects the lives of millions of people, with many suffering from long-term mental and physical symptoms. Although often treated with psychology-based techniques like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), these mouse neurons – reconstructed here in 3D from high-powered microscopy images – offer clues to the how anxiety works at the cellular level. In normal neurons (left), a protein called MeCP2 (artificially-coloured red) hitches a ride into the nucleus (blue) with another protein called importin alpha-5, where it helps to provoke anxious signals. Depriving similar mouse cells of importin alpha-5 traps MeCP2 on the outside (right) – mice without importin alpha-5 are less anxious in stressful situations like escaping a maze. Researchers now hope to use drugs which target related proteins to calm human sufferers, combining this neuroscience with other forms of therapy.

Written by John Ankers

John Ankers

Writer

A former researcher in systems biology, John is now an online biology tutor and professional coach supporting the wellbeing of scientists and NHS professionals. He's writing, too, of course.

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• Image from work by Nicolas Panayotis and colleagues
• Department of Biomolecular Sciences, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
• Image originally published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence
• Published in Cell Reports, December 2018