title: From neural to genetic substrates of panic disorder: Insights from human and mouse studies.
abstract: Fear is an ancestral emotion, an intrinsic defensive response present in every organism. Although fear is an evolutionarily advantageous emotion, under certain pathologies such as panic disorder it might become exaggerated and non-adaptive. Clinical and preclinical work pinpoints that changes in cognitive processes, such as perception and interpretation of environmental stimuli that rely on brain regions responsible for high-level function, are essential for the development of fear-related disorders. This review focuses on the involvement of cognitive function to fear circuitry disorders. Moreover, we address how animal models are contributing to understand the involvement of human candidate genes to pathological fear and helping achieve progress in this field. Multidisciplinary approaches that integrate human genetic findings with state of the art genetic mouse models will allow to elucidate the mechanisms underlying pathology and to develop new strategies for therapeutic targeting.
authors.affiliation: Cellular & Systems Neurobiology, Systems Biology Program, Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), E-08003 Barcelona, Spain; Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), E-08003 Barcelona, Spain; CIBER de Enfermedades Raras (CIBERER), E-08003 Barcelona, Spain; Institute of Biology, Otto-von-Guericke University, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany. Electronic address: monica.santos@ovgu.de.
authors.forename: Mónica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.affiliation: Cellular & Systems Neurobiology, Systems Biology Program, Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), E-08003 Barcelona, Spain; Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), E-08003 Barcelona, Spain; CIBER de Enfermedades Raras (CIBERER), E-08003 Barcelona, Spain; ZeClinics SL, E-08001 Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: davide.damico@zeclinics.com.
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: D'Amico
authors.affiliation: Cellular & Systems Neurobiology, Systems Biology Program, Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG), E-08003 Barcelona, Spain; Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), E-08003 Barcelona, Spain; CIBER de Enfermedades Raras (CIBERER), E-08003 Barcelona, Spain. Electronic address: mara.dierssen@crg.es.
authors.forename: Mara
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dierssen
mesh_terms: D000679:Amygdala / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D018345:Mice, Knockout; D016584:Panic Disorder / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000378:metabolism / Q000503:physiopathology; D013045:Species Specificity
keywords: Anxiety; Cognition; Fear circuit; TgNTRK3; TrkC