ArticleeNeuro
Sex Differences in BNST and Amygdala Activation by Contextual, Cued, and Unpredictable Threats.
Article in eNeuro. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Factors associated with gender and sex differences in anxiety prevalence and comorbidity: A systematic review.Science progressPooled it
- Substantial evidence against sex differences in bed nucleus of the stria terminalis volume in the human brain.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Synaptic, cellular, and circuit mechanisms underlying sex differences in behaviors.Biology of sex differences · 2026Review
- Sex-specific relationships between stress coping and avoidance behavior in adult mice.Biology of sex differences · 2026Article
- Activity of Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Neurons in the Bed Nucleus of the Stria Terminalis Reduces Anxiety-Potentiated Startle in Female Rats in an Estrous Phase-Dependent Manner.Biological psychiatry · 2026Article
- Sex differences in global metrics of brain size across the lifespan.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Deletion ofFrontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2026Article
- Sex-specific relationships between stress coping and avoidance behavior.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Deletion ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Merkel cell stimulation in fear and sensory signaling.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Extended amygdala corticotropin-releasing hormone neurons regulate sexually dimorphic changes in pair bond formation following social defeat in prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster).Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Research progress on the neural circuits mechanisms of anxiety.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2025Review
- Impact of behavioral inhibitory control and startle reactivity to uncertain threat on youth suicide risk.Psychophysiology · 2025Article
- The Relationship Between Anxiety and Employment Status in a German Working-Age Population: Findings on Sex-Specific Prevalence Rates and Associated Factors of Anxiety From the LIFE-Adult-Study.Depression and anxiety · 2025Article
- Sex Differences in Neural Circuits Underlying Fear Processing.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Extended amygdala corticotropin-releasing hormone neurons regulate sexually dimorphic changes in pair bond formation following social defeat in prairie voles (bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Sex differences in contextual fear expression are associated with altered medial prefrontal cortex activity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Fear-Conditioning to Unpredictable Threats Reveals Sex and Strain Differences in Rat Fear-Potentiated Startle (FPS).Neuroscience · 2023Article
- Growth Hormone Action in Somatostatin Neurons Regulates Anxiety and Fear Memory.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Fear and anxiety can be described as emotional and physical responses to predictable and unpredictable threats. While the amygdala is necessary for context and cued fear conditioning, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) is important for anxiety-like behavior and conditioned responses to diffuse and/or unpredictable threats. However, we still lack knowledge about how the BNST and amygdala nuclei act in coordination. Moreover, the incidence of anxiety disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is substantially higher in women than in men, but most studies of fear conditioning are conducted in male rodents. Here, we asked whether the BNST and the lateral, basal, and central nuclei of the amygdala are active during the expression of fear conditioning in male and female rats using FOS immunohistochemistry. We first show that the BNST is indeed involved in context fear expression in males, but not in females. The lateral amygdala was active in both sexes during context fear expression. We next trained animals using tone cues paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US), or tone cues which were unpaired with the US, and thus nonpredictive. Females displayed greater fear expression to these unpaired tones than males. FOS was upregulated in both the BNST and the basal amygdala during fear expression to unpaired tones in both sexes. The differential processing of fear responses by males and females highlights the need to acknowledge sex differences in conditioned fear memory.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.