Following a recent study carried out by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, it has been shown that anxious parents are more likely to have nervous children that are also prone to periods of depression.

The study, which assessed behaviour patterns of 600 rhesus monkeys, from a multi-generational family, showed that the overactive brain circuit often associated with anxiety disorders is passed from one generation to the next.

The young monkeys were exposed to a mildly threatening situation in which a stranger was near to them but not making eye contact – a situation that a child could also be expected to encounter in their daily life.

While in the situation, the team identified areas of the brain in which increased metabolism predicted each individual monkey’s level of anxiety.

They used imaging methods commonly used in humans, including positron emission tomography (PET) to achieve this.

Dr Andrew Fox, Dr Ned Kalin and their colleagues working on the study discovered that approximately 35 per cent of variation in anxiety-like tendencies were due to participants’ genetic history.

Senior author of the study Dr Kalin, said: “This is a big step in understanding the neural underpinnings of inherited anxiety and begins to give us more selective targets for treatment.”

The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), and more information regarding the brain areas affected by hereditary genes, and how they can result in anxiety, is available in the publication.