Anxiety has been hypothesised to be a survival mechanism by which threats are assessed and a more tentative and careful approach, following intense reflection, may confer advantages in dealing with situations. However, chronic anxiety, as can develop in humans and animals exposed to prolonged threat or multiple continued but different threats, can be debilitating and ultimately lead to dysfunction. Because of the detrimental effects of chronic anxiety in humans, interest in the regions of the brain involved has increased and research has tried to locate the main regions affected. In this regard much research has been performed on animal models. This research has highlighted the amygdala and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) as being central to the pathology of anxiety. For example, a higher amygdala weight is associated with greater levels of anxiety in animals and patients with anxiety show higher activation of the amygdala. The BNST likely regulates anxiogenic behaviour because it received prominent projections from the amygdala and routes these to the hypothalamus, which may be involved in activation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis. However, whilst these regions are central to the development of anxiety, there regions form part of a larger network of connections and these connections to the ventral hippocampus (vHPC), the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and other regions are significantly involved in the development of anxiety.
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