Navigating the teenage labyrinth is no walk in the park – the surge of hormones and the weight of mounting expectations can send stress levels soaring. It’s a rough ride, especially for young women, who face an uphill battle with anxiety that their male peers seem to dodge with ease.
The puzzle of why these years are so emotionally taxing for young women might partly lie in an internal “overactive brake” that disrupts normal stress processing.
In a groundbreaking study, psychologist Nicola Johnstone and cognitive neuroscientist Kathrin Cohen Kadosh from the University of Surrey have uncovered a tantalizing link between age-related shifts in brain chemistry and anxiety in females.
Their work draws on the theory that anxiety disorders could stem from a delicate balance between stimulating and inhibiting signals within the brain’s emotional control centers.
Our brains are battlegrounds where chemicals like glutamate and GABA wrestle for control – glutamate lights up neural pathways, while GABA insists on keeping them dark.
But it’s not always clear-cut; silencing one brain circuit can inadvertently spotlight another.
Take GABA, traditionally thought to cap anxiety. Newer studies, however, cast shadows on this belief, hinting that an abundance of GABA in the brain’s command centers might actually ramp up anxiety by over-regulating thoughts and actions.
Armed with this insight, Johnstone and Kadosh gathered a group of 49 girls between 10 to 12 years old and 32 young women aged 18 to 25, to delve into their mental health histories. They then peered into their brains via MRI to track how GABA and glutamate levels fluctuated in areas tied to logic and emotion, linking these to varying anxiety levels across ages.
Although the study didn’t delve into the direct effects of these neurochemical shifts, the duo argue that their findings, in light of past research, indicate that anxiety could stem from this neurochemical imbalance, particularly in the older subjects.
“Our study points to a crucial balance between GABA and glutamate in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as a key player in anxiety,” explains Johnstone.
“While glutamate accelerates brain activity, GABA hits the brakes. It seems that anxiety, with its disruption of logical thought, is closely intertwined with an overactive GABA system.”
This doesn’t mean anxiety is gender-specific. Other research, including studies on male brains by Cohen Kadosh, shows that the neural pathways of stress can vary between sexes, with males perhaps better equipped to handle increased GABA activity in the prefrontal cortex.
“Understanding the dance between GABA and glutamate during pivotal growth phases like adolescence is crucial for early detection and prevention of anxiety disorders,” asserts Cohen Kadosh.
“Our findings illuminate a pathway that could be targeted for novel treatments, particularly for young women.”
The study was featured in the journal Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience.
