We are all familiar with the question - "Are you a man or a mouse?" What if the answer is "a little of both"? Because of the power of molecular genetics research in animals and the maturation of animal models, the path to identifying genes involved in particular types of behavior, such as fear, is much clearer in animals than in humans.

An Australian study has flagged an important truth for the medical research community. Like their human counterparts, male and female mice are not only different, their respective genetic responses can often be the reverse of what you'd expect from pharmacological results. This has important ramifications for laboratory and clinical testing.

According to the Mood Disorder Society of Canada, about 1.3 million Canadians suffer from depression.

Mice missing 'fear' gene slow to protect offspring; finding could enhance understanding of human anxiety, including post-partum depression

Voluntary physical activity does not appear to cause a reduction in anxiety and depression, but exercise and mood may be associated through a common genetic factor, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Anxiety is a normal human response to stress, but in some, it can develop into a disabling disorder of excessive and irrational fears, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, or posttraumatic stress disorder.

We all know people who are tense and nervous and can't relax. They may have been wired differently since childhood.

An acute session of moderate aerobic exercise, but not heavy aerobic or moderate strength exercises, can reduce the anxiety state and improve the sleep quality of insomnia patients, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Wednesday at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).

How best to alleviate chronic pain, a leading cause of disability and employee absenteeism, continues to perplex both patients and their doctors.

Eighteen per cent of school children who took part in two health surveys carried out a year apart admitted they had eating problems, according to research published in the latest Journal of Advanced Nursing.

New study in the FASEB Journal shows how and why molecules released from burning incense in religious ceremonies alleviate anxiety and depression

Wouldn’t it be nice if our doctors could predict accurately whether we would respond to a particular medication" This question is important because research studies provide information about how groups of patients tend to respond to treatments, but inevitably, differences among groups of patients with the same diagnosis mean that findings about groups of patients may not apply to individuals from those groups.