The Neural Substrate of the Subjective Experience of Anxiety

More than eighty years ago, Cannon (1927) posited that the most defining aspects of the subjective experience of the various emotions arise directly from neural activity in the thalamus that projects to, and produces activation in, the neocortex. In more recent times, the neural origins of the most basic emotions have been identified principally with subcortical structures other than the thalamus. However, there is one form of emotional experience for which parts of the thalamus seem uniquely suited to generate, and that is the subjective experience of anxiety.