How an increased heart rate could induce anxiety in mice
Nature Podcast
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Anxiety Related Behaviour in Mice
In one set of experiments the team briefly increased the heart rate of mice by about a third from a mouse's baseline of 660 beats per minute up to 900 beats per minute. This increase on its own didn't produce any anxiety related behaviour. If the animals were in a non-threatening environment there was no effect of pacing the heart at higher rates. But if the animal was in an anxiety provoking environment then pacing the heart substantially increased the anxiety related behaviours of the animal. And what's more Karl says that this switch in behaviour happened immediately in mice when the heart rates were increased. To get an idea of what might be underlying this shift in behaviour they looked in the mouse's brains to see what
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