{"id":205811,"date":"2025-02-07T08:02:49","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T14:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/advanced-brain-circuit-mapping-technique-reveals-new-anxiety-drug-target"},"modified":"2025-02-07T08:02:49","modified_gmt":"2025-02-07T14:02:49","slug":"advanced-brain-circuit-mapping-technique-reveals-new-anxiety-drug-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/02\/advanced-brain-circuit-mapping-technique-reveals-new-anxiety-drug-target","title":{"rendered":"Advanced Brain Circuit-Mapping Technique Reveals New Anxiety Drug Target"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/advanced-brain-circuit-mapping-technique-reveals-new-anxiety-drug-target2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Weill Cornell Medicine investigators have identified in a preclinical model a specific brain circuit whose inhibition appears to reduce anxiety without side effects. Their work suggests a new target for treating anxiety disorders and related conditions and demonstrates a general strategy, based on a method called photopharmacology, for mapping drug effects on the brain.<\/p>\n<p>In their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/neuron\/fulltext\/S0896-6273(25)00006-6\">study<\/a>, published Jan. 28 in Neuron, the researchers examined the effects of experimental drug compounds that activate a type of brain-cell receptor called the metabotropic glutamate receptor 2 (mGluR2). While these receptors are found on neurons within many brain circuits, the team showed that activating them in a specific circuit terminating in an emotion-related brain region called the amygdala reduces signs of anxiety without apparent adverse side effects. Current treatments for anxiety disorders, panic disorder and associated conditions can have unwanted side effects including cognitive impairments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur findings indicate a new and important target for the treatment of anxiety-related disorders and show that our photopharmacology-based approach holds promise more broadly as a way to precisely reverse-engineer how therapeutics work in the brain,\u201d said study senior author <a href=\"https:\/\/vivo.weill.cornell.edu\/display\/cwid-jtl2003\">Dr. Joshua Levitz<\/a>, an associate professor of biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medicine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Weill Cornell Medicine investigators have identified in a preclinical model a specific brain circuit whose inhibition appears to reduce anxiety without side effects. Their work suggests a new target for treating anxiety disorders and related conditions and demonstrates a general strategy, based on a method called photopharmacology, for mapping drug effects on the brain. In [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}