How Estrogen Modulates Fear Learning

Low estrogen levels may make women more susceptible to the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at some points in their menstrual cycles or lifetimes, while high estrogen levels may be protective.

Researchers at The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles have identified a new genetic candidate for testing therapies that might affect fear learning in people with PTSD or other conditions. Results of the study have been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Individuals with trauma- and stress-related disorders can manifest symptoms of these conditions in a variety of ways. Genetic risk factors for these and other psychiatric disorders have been established but do not explain the diversity of symptoms seen in the clinic – why are some individuals affected more severely than others and why do some respond better than others to the same treatment?

“People often experience stress and anxiety symptoms, yet they don’t usually manifest to the degree that results in a clinical diagnosis,” says Allison T. Knoll, PhD, post-doctoral fellow at The Saban Research Institute of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. “We felt that if we could understand differences in the severity of symptoms in a typical population, it might provide clues about clinical heterogeneity in patients.”

(via Watch: The science of genetic inheritance is weirder than we thought - ScienceAlert)

Are genes the only things you inherit from your parents? This video does a good job of explaining epigenetic inheritance really simply. 

Don’t Get Scared Now

Fear is a tricky subject. On one hand it is a protective emotion that uses our past experiences and warns us of potentially dangerous situations. In other cases however it can drive people to become scared of relatively normal things such as the outdoors, in the case of agoraphobia. Fear can also play an important role in psychiatric disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and…