Case report: anxiety and fear in a patient with meningioma compressing the left amygdala.

ABSTRACT

The amygdalae are an important part of fear and anxiety circuits in the mammalian brain, involved in the encoding and storage of fear memories. In this case report we discuss a 26-year-old male patient with a temporal lobe meningioma that presented with unilateral abducens palsy, deep-seated headaches, and persistent psychiatric symptoms including depression and anticipatory anxiety. The patient's psychiatric symptoms and clinical diagnosis provided the impetus for the eventual diagnostic imaging and discovery of the intracranial lesion.