Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Feb;18(2):465-466.
doi: 10.1080/15548627.2021.2014769. Epub 2021 Dec 19.

Fuel for emotion: how mitophagy in the BLA can mediate increased anxiety in stressful social situations

James Johnson  1 , Zheng Li  1
Affiliations

Fuel for emotion: how mitophagy in the BLA can mediate increased anxiety in stressful social situations

James Johnson et al. Autophagy. 2022 Feb.

Abstract

Psychosocial stress is a common risk factor for anxiety disorders. The cellular mechanism for the anxiogenic effect of psychosocial stress is largely unclear. We recently showed that chronic social defeat (CSD) stress in mice causes mitochondrial impairment, which triggers the PINK1-PRKN/parkin mitophagy pathway selectively in the amygdala. This mitophagy elevation causes excessive mitochondrial elimination and consequent mitochondrial deficiency. Mitochondrial deficiency in the basolateral amygdalae (BLA) causes weakening of synaptic transmission in the BLA-BNST (bed nucleus of the stria terminalis) anxiolytic pathway and increased anxiety. The CSD-induced increase in anxiety-like behaviors is abolished in pink1-/- and prkn-/- mice and alleviated by optogenetic activation of the BLA-BNST synapse. This study identifies an unsuspected role of mitophagy in psychogenetic-stress-induced anxiety elevation and reveals that mitochondrial deficiency is sufficient to increase anxiety and underlies the psychosocial-stress-induced anxiety increase. Mitochondria and mitophagy, therefore, can be potentially targeted to ameliorate anxiety.

Keywords: BNST; Mitophagy; amygdala; anxiety; mitochondria; psychological stress; social defeat stress.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Chronic social defeat stress in mice induces mitochondrial damage and biogenesis or mitophagy impairments through the PINK1-PRKN/parkin pathway. The stress-induced mitochondrial deficiencies in the basolateral amygdalae (BLA) results in weakened synaptic transmission in the BLA-BNST (bed nucleus of the stria terminalis) pathway, leading to anxiety-like behavior.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Golden SA, Covington HE 3rd, Berton O, et al. A standardized protocol for repeated social defeat stress in mice. Nat Protoc. 2011;6:1183–1191. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources