Anxiety and panic neuroscience

[Renald]

I am interested in anxiety and panic. Some people think panic is just the extreme anxiety. From my subjective feelings panic is the feeling of anxiety of the anxiety which is happening - you are afraid of the anxiety itself.
I look at these hypotheses from neuropharmacological point of view. If the panic is the very pronounced anxiety, can it be both of these feelings are regulated by the same receptor or pathway, just panic is caused by more activation (or inhibition) of the same receptor. Or both feelings are caused by different receptors/pathways, even they may have connection between them?
Also, anxiety can happen without panic, this is how it usually manifests, but can the opposite feeling also happen - panic attack with no anxiety? If no, it looks that form neuropharmacological point of view there is at least a very deep connection between these hypothetical receptors/pathways, or there is the same pathway with different activation strength.

 

[Cotcha Yankinov]

A larger amygdala predicts anxiety in humans, while enlarged amygdalae is also seen in chronic PTSD. I think a great dear of fear circuitry probably involves the amygdala and therein lies the commonality between anxiety and panic attacks. Panic attacks to me are sort of a critical mass of anxiety, though the thing to understand is that someone with PTSD from trauma can have a normal amount of anxiety while taking a test and that might not activate the same exact circuits as that same person recalling the trauma.

So anxiety might be a somewhat appropriate response to a stressful situation and may not hit the same circuits that recollection of trauma lights up. Sorry to be overlapping panic attacks and PTSD here but usually people having panic attacks have trauma. I think it would be very rare that you would find someone without trauma that has panic attacks.