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How an anxious heart talks to the brain

During periods of anxiety, the brain affects the heart, but does a racing heart also talk to the brain to cause anxiety-related behaviour? Use of a light-stimulated pacemaker in mice shows that it does, and pinpoints a brain region involved.
  1. Yoni Couderc

    1. Yoni Couderc is at Bordeaux University, Neurocentre Magendie, INSERM 1215, 33000 Bordeaux, France.

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  2. Anna Beyeler

    1. Anna Beyeler is at Bordeaux University, Neurocentre Magendie, INSERM 1215, 33000 Bordeaux, France.

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Have you ever been so anxious that you could feel your heart racing in your chest? This tachycardia is one of the main symptoms of anxiety1, and can be so intense that the person experiencing it sometimes mistakes it for a heart attack. Experimental research has revealed numerous pathways that convey signals from the brain to the heart. But in both clinical psychiatry and fundamental neuroscience, the reverse — the effect of heart rate on emotions — has remained a debated question for almost a century2. Writing in Nature, Hsueh et al.3 address this issue, identifying a mechanism by which the brain detects heart rate, and showing how this, in turn, controls emotional behaviour.

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Nature 615, 217-218 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00502-6

References

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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