Standing on the edge of a precipice, losing your way in a dark forest, or running into a crush will quicken your pulse—a physical consequence of the anxiety you experience. New findings of a March 2023 study offer evidence of the reverse: A faster heart rate can generate anxiety.
When researchers artificially boosted the heart rate (the number of times a heart beats each minute) of mice, they became more anxious and behaved more cautiously in risky situations. The researchers traced the change to a particular region of the cortex, which appears to integrate heart rate with the brain’s perception of danger to determine the appropriate emotional response….