Stress could be as important a risk factor as smoking and high blood pressure, the US researchers said.
Heart experts said at-risk patients should be helped to manage stress.
Emotional stress has long been linked with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), which affects the heart and blood vessels - but the way this happens has not been properly understood.
This study, led by a team from Harvard Medical School, points to heightened activity in the amygdala - an area of the brain that processes emotions such as fear and anger - as helping to explain the link.
The researchers suggest that the amygdala signals to the bone marrow to produce extra white blood cells, which in turn act on the arteries causing them to become inflamed. This can then cause heart attacks, angina and strokes.
As a result, when stressed, this part of the brain appears to be a good predictor of cardiovascular events.
But they also said more research was needed to confirm this chain of events.
Inflammation insight
The Lancet research looked at two different studies. The first scanned the brain, bone marrow, spleen and arteries of 293 patients, who were tracked for nearly four years to see if they developed CVD. In this time, 22 patients did, and they were the ones with higher activity in the amygdala.
The second very small study, of 13 patients, looked at the relationship between stress levels and inflammation in the body.
It found that those who reported the highest levels of stress had the highest levels of amygdala activity and more evidence of inflammation in their blood and arteries.
Dr Ahmed Tawakol, lead author and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said: "Our results provide a unique insight into how stress may lead to cardiovascular disease.
"This raises the possibility that reducing stress could produce benefits that extend beyond an improved sense of psychological wellbeing.
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