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. 2023 Jun 22;9:97. doi: 10.1038/s41531-023-00547-4

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© The Author(s) 2023

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Fig. 1 — The basolateral amygdala (BLA) is a central regulator of fear circuitry and other brain regions are involved in these processes. Interconnection of various brain regions in fear by different neurotransmitter pathways including serotonergic (red), glutamatergic (green), dopaminergic (black), norepinephrinergic (blue), and GABAergic (purple). Efferent projection of serotonin from dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN) to various brain regions such as BLA, ventral tegmental area (VTA), substantia nigra (SN), and prefrontal cortex (PFC). Glutamate projections interconnect different brain regions. Norepinephrine (NE) is released from projections of locus coeruleus (LC) and nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS). The VTA and SN provide dopaminergic inputs to the nucleus accumbens (NAc), bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST), BLA, hippocampus (HPC), PFC, and insular cortex (IC). VTA and SN receive GABAergic projections from NAc and the central amygdala (CeA) sends GABAergic projections to the hypothalamus (HY) and the periaqueductal gray (PAG). BNST sends or receives GABAergic projection to/from HY and CeA; and GABAergic interneurons are present in NAc, IC, and BLA. Reduced amygdala volume, neuronal cell loss, and neuronal activity are associated with anxiety disorders. Serotonin: 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT); gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA); dopamine (DA); glutamate (Glu); lateral septum (LS); thalamus (TH).