Cortical kainate receptors and behavioral anxiety

The study of glutamatergic synapses mainly focuses on the memory-related hippocampus. Recent studies in the cortical areas such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) show that excitatory synapses can undergo long-term plastic changes in adult animals. Long-term potentiation (LTP) of cortical synapses may play important roles in chronic pain and anxiety. In addition to NMDA and AMPA receptors, kainate (KA) receptors have been found to play roles in synaptic transmission, regulation and presynaptic forms of LTP. In this brief review, I will summarize the new progress made on KA receptors, and propose that ACC synapses may provide a good synaptic model for understanding cortical mechanism for behavioral anxiety, and its related emotional disorders.