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Preschool children who exhibit anxious, shy behaviors are at risk for later social anxiety (Am J Psychiatry 2001; 158:1673), and their families have high rates of panic disorder (Am J Psychiatry 2000; 157:2002). To gain knowledge of the neurocircuitry and heritability of anxious behaviors, researchers studied 238 young, mostly prepubertal, rhesus monkeys (mean age, 2.4 years; 49% males) from a large, multigenerational pedigree.
The researchers conducted a behavioral experiment known to produce an anxious phenotype (i.e., freezing in place, lowered vocalizations) and performed positron emission tomography (PET) using labeled glucose immediately afterwards. In the 30-minute experiment, each monkey was alone in a cage when a human intruder ente…