Animal Models and Assays Probing Anxiety Related Behaviors and Neural Circuits

Abstract Anxiety tests and models in rodents are useful tools to reveal neurochemical, cellular, and molecular underpinnings of normal and pathological anxiety-related behaviors, as well as novel treatment targets. While anxiety models are generated by various approaches such as selective breeding, anxiety tests most commonly involve unconditioned approach avoidance tasks and conditioned learning paradigms, both characterized by inherent advantages and limitations, in particular their predictive value for specific anxiety disorders. To further improve the validity and translatability of preclinical anxiety testing, it is promising that some anxiety-relevant endophenotypes have now been investigated using similar tests in rodents and humans and that the involved neural pathways and mechanisms overlap considerably in both species.