Title:Cognition and State Anxiety are Regulated by Thyroid Hormone Signaling
Volume: 15
Issue: 1
Author(s): Marc Fisher and Nandini Vasudevan
Affiliation:
Keywords:
Thyroid hormone receptors, neurogenesis, spatial memory, BDNF, anxiety.
Abstract: Anxiety and cognition are both linked to deficits in thyroid hormone concentrations in humans
and in rodent models. Both processes have also been shown to be affected by the loss of the thyroid
hormone receptors (TR) or by mutant transgenic TRs. Specifically, the unbalanced action of the
unliganded TRα1 is thought to be important in the memory deficit and extreme anxiety seen in transgenic
mice. The contribution of TRβ is less well defined and the molecular mechanisms that underlie
these deficits are also unknown. We review the literature that demonstrates the importance of the thyroid
hormone (TH) and the TR in these processes and focus on the mechanisms, in particular adult
hippocampal neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus, that might be important in mediating both state anxiety and cognition by
thyroid hormone.
