Scientists believe the connectivity between two regions, the central nucleus of the amygdala and the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, could be passed on in families, according to research in monkeys.
A team at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health studied 378 preadolescent rhesus macaques. Young ones were chosen, as extreme anxiety in childhood carries a risk factor for anxiety and depression in humans."
May I suggest an alternate theory?
We are all temporary. None of us are the center of the Universe. We will all die. Everyone we know, and love, will die. We are born into a world we didn't make, and can check out at any time. We have to make choices without knowing the consequences. We make choices all the time without adequate information. These choices can define our lives forever.
We live with people we barely know (our families), we are forced to go to school, to wear shoes, to behave. We are forced to learn the history of our kind. It isn't pretty. We find out that people are selfish, mean, cruel, capable of repulsive and despicable behavior.
People get murdered every day. Sometimes World Wars destroy generations of Human Beings. We have invented Weapons of Mass Destruction which we use to intimidate each other. We discover that Human Beings have invented things like Racism, Slavery, Genocide.
We are walking around this spinning ball in a great, infinitely vast Universe of spinning balls. We search for Love and Meaning, but for some of us these things are like Chimeras. We find out that much of our lives are spent in Jobs. Some of these Jobs are exciting, but for most of us, they are drudgery; unfulfilling, low-paid, time-wasters. We spend lots of our time watching clocks, stuck on freeways, riding public transportation. Everything smells funny.
We have to feed ourselves. We spend lots of time on toilets. It's weird, creepy, all the things we have to do as a Human Being.
We wonder if there's a Hell, or a Heaven, I think, we've given up on Purgatory. We like to think that if we live a good life we are rewarded, or if someone lives a bad life they are punished, but this is probably just a fairy tale we tell ourselves. We see injustice succeed all the time. We see good acts punished all the time.
Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. All the time. We regret the Past and Fear the Future. We hate change, change is happening every minute. We are changing, morphing, just like Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly." It's not pretty.
So yes, anxious and depressed? Let's blame the Monkeys!