Study strategies for neurobiology mechanism of "kidney storing will and responding to fear" / 中西医结合学报

ABSTRACT

The theory of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) deems that kidney essence is the material basis of formation, development and function of the brain and it maintains human being's psychomotility and behavior. Moreover, kidney essence is the material basis of emotional activity. The emotion theory in TCM deems that kidney stores will and responds to fear. The so called will in this theory refers to memory which includes three basic steps such as memorization, storage and recollection. Meanwhile, Western medicine considers stress as a kind of information that forms memory trace in central nervous system. Combining the TCM theory with the modern psychological theory on stress, and from the points of views of the emotion regulation, the formation, consolidation, extraction and extinction of fear memory, and the plasticity of amygdala-hippocampus-prefrontal cortex nervous pathway, as well as the results of pharmacological studies of prescriptions and herbs for invigorating the kidney, the authors explained in this article the pathological mechanisms of kidney deficiency due to attack of fear, and revealed the material basis, the action modes, and the neurobiological mechanisms of the kidney in controlling and regulating emotional activity.